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Cat Hicks

I talked to four PhD friends yesterday and every single one of them is looking at jobs outside the US, with different levels of probability, but these are extremely serious people with extremely serious lab infrastructure they would never think about leaving lightly

I have a very multinational family (including lots of immigration under duress/adversity) so I'm not flippant about this in any way, leaving the country is REALLY really difficult, I think it's likely impossible for so many people, yet the mass scale hostile social psychological intervention that's happening to US scientists just feels very real

Some of us have spent our entire scientific careers in labs with people from all over the world and we've watched the pain of our colleagues in other political situations in their homes, I was in a postdoc union when we were advocating for the international postdocs and their precarity to have better protections, I think people don't realize how much our scientific communities cross borders and what a beautiful thing this is

@grimalkina I left the US about a year ago. I was/am in just about the easiest scenario one can imagine. And, yet, I will say, it's been difficult, expensive, time-consuming, frustrating.

@grimalkina it is very hard what happens under Trump. 😔

@grimalkina at least ten people I know personally have left the country.

more are either thinking about it or actively trying. mostly the tipping point is to protect their children.

a couple have been telling me to get out myself. they’re not wrong.

@grimalkina

the brain drain from the disruption of scientific research, destroying of academic independence in the name of killing DEI/Woke, and the paranoid fear of "foreign" grad students at US universitiies is going to take years to recover from, assuming we do.

@grimalkina Einstein left home when things got Reichy too.

@grimalkina I liquidated my retirement on friday and am leaving in July to find property in Italy. I can't risk my family being here. At the very least I need to be prepared.

@grimalkina

So, stay and fight back!
Never bow to dictators but resist!

@grimalkina It was the same at South African universities a year or 10 ago. And brain drain is a serious, generationally disadvantaging issue.