PARIS, March 9, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - France has urged the country's research
institutions to consider how to welcome scientists abandoning the United
States in response to President Donald Trump's policies, AFP learned on
Sunday.

Since Trump returned to the White House, his government has cut federal
funding for life-saving research and moved to dismiss hundreds of federal
workers working on health and climate.

"Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the
United States," France's minister for higher education and research Philippe
Baptiste wrote in a letter to the country's institutions.

"We would naturally wish to welcome a certain number of them."

Baptiste urged research leaders to send him "concrete proposals on the topic,
both on priority technologies and scientific fields".

This week, Aix-Marseille University in the south of France announced it was
setting up a programme dedicated to welcoming US researchers, notably those
working on climate change.

Besides the scores of cuts overseen by Trump's billionaire tech tycoon ally
Elon Musk, the US leader has withdrawn Washington from the World Health
Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement.

In protest, scientists rallied in cities across the United States on Friday,
with many of their French counterparts in the southwestern city of Toulouse
attending a solidarity demonstration.

Trump's appointment of noted vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr as the head
of the Department of Health and Human Services has also angered many
scientists.