Good morning,
Donald Trump's anti-intellectual assault on academics is no longer confined to the United States.
Last month, his agents demanded Finnish researchers to strip the words “climate change”, “equal society”, “inclusive society” and “women in society” from ads promoting the Fulbright programme.
More recently, they sent a survey asking Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands if they have programmes that promote diversity, climate or run counter to US government interests. Another asked whether the researcher’s organisation works with "entities associated with communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties".
The EU and US together account for nearly 50 percent of global research and innovation funding. Now Trump is pulling the plug as part of a wider effort to weed out "anti-American ideology", including from reputable research centres and museums in the US.
It is an ideology I do not recognise. You may ask yourself, what does a European know about American ideology? But dear reader, your editor today is also a US national who has spent formative years in country he no longer recognises.
The history of western civilisation has ushered in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and liberal democracy.
Trump's America has since kicked started a new era of Stupid, an American brain drain following a flurry of executive orders that seek to dismantle the department of education, defund climate science, cap indirect cost rates for universities receiving federal research funds, and others still.
– Nikolaj Nielsen, home affairs editor
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