SSometimes, you should know when to inspire China. In 2009, with Ding Hong in Beijing, a 39 -year -old physicist who had just established himself in a new laboratory at the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of China. Ding had just returned from the United States, where he had gone in 1990, as a student disappointed by the Massre of Tiananmen Square. Since then, he became an American citizen, began a family and secured a starting position in the Department of Physics of Boston College, in Massachusetts.
What could have made it possible to leave the life of this dream? A decision of the National Foundation of Sciences of the United States, which financed its research in Boston College, to suspend its financing as part of cost reduction measures. The financial crisis had just hit. Hong Kong had made the young physicist some work sacrifices, Boston College had presented contracts, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences had surpassed them. “In general, in terms of research and financing, it was the best sacrifice,” Ding tolerated us at that time. “Here, I can concentrate on my fundamental scientific work.”
Sixteen years later, it is not the financial crisis that has caused panic in American universities and research centers, but an ideological revolution, promoted by the Trump administration and its bad temper, Elon Musk. The budgets were cut during the night. The prestigious institutions face the threat of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds if they do not meet political demands, which go against their ethics.
Some have anticipated the changes, dismissing the staff and renouncing recruitment. Foreign students who protest have been arrested in the streets by the plain police officers. Wise teachers have begun to leave their usual phones or computers behind when they travel abroad, for fear of having to submit them to immigration authorities upon their return. Academic freedom is under attack.
‘Help our colleagues about there’
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