Nearly 300 academics have applied to a French university’s offer to take in US-based researchers rattled by the American government’s crackdown on academia, as a former French president called for the creation of a “scientific refugee” status for academics in peril. Earlier this year, France’s Aix-Marseille University was among the first in Europe to respond to the funding freezes, cuts and executive orders unleashed on institutions across the US by Donald Trump’s administration. What they were offering – through a programme titled Safe Place for Science – was a sort of “scientific asylum”, offering three years of funding at their facility for about 20 researchers. On Thursday the university said it had received 298 applications in a month, of which 242 were deemed eligible. The applicants hailed from institutions such as Johns Hopkins University, NASA, Columbia, Yale and Stanford, it said in a statement. Most of the applications were sent using encrypted messaging, the university’s president, Eric Berton, wrote in the French newspaper Libération. “And with them came worrying, sometimes chilling, accounts from American researchers about the fate reserved for them by the Trump administration,” he said. Most of the applicants were experienced researchers in fields that ranged from the humanities to life sciences and the environment, according to the university. Just over half of the eligible applicants, 135, were American, while 45 were dual nationals. More than a dozen French citizens also applied, as did Europeans, Indian nationals and Brazilians. The university said the selection process would start in the coming days, with the aim of allowing researchers to begin arriving in early June. François Hollande, a former president of France and a current Socialist MP, recently joined forces with Berton to call for France to recognise embattled researchers from around the world as refugees. “Just like the expression of divergent opinions, their work, which is a source of innovation and knowledge, has become a risk for the propaganda of regimes,” the pair recently wrote in Libération. Academics, much like journalists or political opponents, should be able to qualify for protection, they argued. “Indeed, current asylum mechanisms do not take into account the specificities of the academic environment and the threats facing scientists within authoritarian regimes,” they wrote. “This is why we are making an urgent request, one that is appropriate for the current situation: the creation of a ‘scientific refugee’ status.” On Monday, Hollande backed his words with legislative action. In a bill tabled in the country’s national assembly, he proposed that researchers who are suffering attacks on their academic freedom be eligible for subsidiary protection – a category reserved for asylum seekers who do not meet the conditions for refugee status but who can demonstrate that they are facing serious threats. Doing so would allow for faster and more efficient processing of these researchers, as officials could set out clear eligibility criteria and map out pathways to ensure that they would be able to continue their research. Hollande described it as an “obligation”, particularly for researchers working in fields such as the climate crisis. “If they are interrupted, hindered, prevented, it will be a step backwards for humanity,” he told the broadcaster France Inter. He described the bill – which must be approved by parliament – as a response to a historic moment. “It’s a symbolic way to show that France is an open country at a time when the United States is closing in on itself and authoritarian regimes are pursuing aggressive, repressive policies,” he said. “It’s about rediscovering the France of the Enlightenment, the one that in other times was capable of welcoming persecuted researchers from all over the world.”
Author: Ashifa Kassam European community affairs correspondent