Operation Brain Drain: Intellectual Flight from the United States
- Zach Rogers
- Apr 17
- 4 min read
In a recent intervention, I mentioned a historian whom I treasure, Dr. Timothy Snyder of Yale, who has been a steadfast critic of the Trump administration. Regrettably, due to political pressures and looming cuts to higher education, many academics such as Snyder have decided to leave the US in the near future. For decades, the United States has maintained a reputation as the academy’s preeminent research centre because of its commitment to funding unabashedly innovative scholarship. One can only imagine the frustration and terror of being an academic in a field, such as fascism, bound to draw Trumpist ire. There is a growing fear and uncertainty of starting a career path antithetical to the current administration’s mission to misinform the public at every step. Taking fastidious notes from one of his favourite authoritarians, Trump and the RNC have paid the utmost attention to Orban’s absolutist Hungary.
In pure Orban fashion, Trump has envisioned a plan to defund leading scientific and public policy research in the United States through executive orders. Most recently, a French scientist was stopped by border authorities in a random check and was deemed to be a threat because of anti-Trump jokes and comments found in his devices at the time of his questioning. The French Foreign Ministry commented that it “deplores this situation” because of its damaging effects on cooperative international research as a whole. Within the nation itself, Trump has caused an eruption of discontent among the scientific community after the National Institute of Health issued a statement saying it would have to cut billions of dollars in grants and research funding across the board. For a scientist at the edge of a breakthrough or continuing the magnificent work of medical research to contend with vindictive, unserious, and deleterious cuts is simply suicidal for the national body. The future of scientific research in the United States is growing eerily darker but especially anything falling under climate change. The United States could easily be a leading climate advocate on the global stage, but we are once again under the thumb of a government unconcerned by the warnings from climate scientists and the cries of nature across the globe.
During an undergraduate political film class, we watched Dr. Strangelove for insights into the mass hysteria spread by the Red Scare and McCarthyism in the United States. For those who haven’t seen the movie, General Jack Ripper goes on a tirade about the dangers of fluoridation in the United States’ drinking water and how it was the largest contributor to the communist wave. As a twenty-year-old with no conception of real-world mass hysteria, I found this film’s characters to be hilarious, but RFK and Trump have proved to me that yes, these idiots are real. Utah has recently decided that it will remove fluoride from the water system because we’ve decided as a country to go back to our anti-communism and atom bomb era. It is inconceivable that elected leaders passed this bill, and though it won’t cause massive health failures, it certainly has jabbed another big hole in public medicine and science tout court.
A misinformed public is not only a dangerous one but one riven with misfortune. Viktor Orban has been a consummate professional at destroying democracy from within, and that is certainly due to his ‘traditional’ values and commitment to ‘cutting waste’ in his country - ring any bells? His autocratic takeover of the Parliament in Budapest has resulted in Hungary being the most corrupt in the EU for three years running. The country’s GDP is stagnant, the population is most definitely shrinking, and production is sure to continue dropping. Orban has used economic pressure, political threats, and constant loyalist recruitment to ensure that he can continue straightjacketing freedom of expression. Sound familiar to anyone that you’ve seen in the news lately? If you said Donald Trump, you’d be correct; he is taking the playbook note for note on this one. It starts with the disruption of scientific research and tumbles down the slippery slope to doctors and scientists leaving in waves for better opportunities abroad. Anne Applebaum, Soviet Historian and author at the Atlantic, has confirmed these poignant similarities between Trump and Orban in her recent article about the love affair they seem to have. When a Soviet Historian tells you, “Hey, this guy is definitely an autocrat,” I’d take her word for it.
In the global wave of misinformation and authoritarianism, it is difficult to know where to turn when the rise of far-right populists seems to only be accelerating. We try our utmost to demand transparency and accountability from our governments, but it seems across the globe that the world order is straying from its postwar aim of universal and expansive human rights. In Applebaum’s most recent book, Autocracy, Inc., she highlights the necessity of building coalitions against growing authoritarianism through pivotal institutions such as the World Health Organisation, the Associated Press, Freedom House, and Reuters. All unwavering sources of facts and statistics that act as a bulwark to thwart the increasing weaponisation of misinformation in the 21st century. These organisations represent hope and strength, the two most prominent opponents of the far-right and dictatorships wherever they are. It is paramount that we support and utilise these sources, as they continue to do crucial research to keep democracy afloat.
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