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Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears
263 mdhb 150 5/24/2025, 9:53:47 PM nature.com ↗
We will probably be skipping the US for two international conferences I have helped organize. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Halifax are all great alternatives for larger meetings from 2027 ti 20??.
I am hopeful that my fellow Americans will elect a responsible, intelligent, virtuous leader in 2028 to be sworn into office on that day.
I know I'm asking a LOT. However that's one of, if not the most, important jobs in the world. We all deserve to have someone at least that qualified there.
It would take time to re-establish trust.
I’d only put 60/40 odds on the 2028 election not being temporarily suspended due to a state of emergency.
If you think 60/40 is the right odds, you have some opportunities available - to make fake dollars, at least: https://manifold.markets/AndrewG/will-donald-trump-attempt-t...
I bet you could find more than a few people here to take the other side of 60/40 odds in a $100 bet.
Do you think the current VP has the integrity of VP Pence?
Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning. This is not a “I wouldn’t vote for a felon/rapist/whatever” type of red line that falls apart when you question it - they are universally against it. I sincerely think screwing with the election terms or dates to prolong Trump’s term is likely to cause immediate and shocking support evaporation. Enough to embolden Congress to do stuff, and he won’t have enough control over any armed agency to do anything to Congress.
I think that a Trump who is trying to avoid prosecution for $crimes is much more likely to throw his weight behind a GOP candidate in early 2028. Vance or whoever. That’s his best chance to stay out of jail (for prosecutions political or legitimate, doesn’t matter). After a few solid months of propping up another GOP candidate, Trump’s base will be even less rabid about him specifically. He’s going to be old news in late 2028.
If Trump doesn’t support another candidate in 2028, then I’d start to worry. I just don’t see it happening - the game theory very obviously says he must support a not-him candidate by early 2028, and doing that will make it even harder to pull off shenanigans.
It's happened with every other thing he's done.
They don't support it until he does it, and then they'll be ready to die on that hill.
He isn't the candidate people who actually hold on to any principles voted for, because he has none, and he expects his supporters to not have any either. The only thing that matters is winning.
Yeah because it didn't happen (yet). Standard Trump supporter maneuver. If you went back to 2019 and asked them if they'd support someone trying to overthrow the result of a presidential election, you'd get the same visceral negative reaction.
Once it happens, they find reasons why it's okay.
What were their thoughts and reactions after Jan 6? Clearly it was not a red line for them, but just curious if you discussed it with them right after.
I don’t want to argue against your lived experience, but somebody is buying all those hats and yard signs.
I just think it’s telling that all the rabid Trump supporters I know aren’t there. Zero of them want to see him on the ballot a fourth time or otherwise pull shenanigans.
Then Trump does them, and when questioned about that, they shrug it off.
thats not excusing trump supporters but also you can maybe understand why there is a predilection to just hope it goes away (because often it does)
They said the same thing on Jan 6, 2021. Trump supporters had a very negative visceral reaction to that day.
But on Jan 7, 2021 the propaganda machine started up again and minds began changing one by one. Today, the very people who were running for their lives on Jan 6 are in support of officially teaching in schools that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats -- the very lie that cause the violence of the day, that caused so many to say "I do not support this". Four years later they voted for it again.
So when I hear tales of a Trump voter who is against something Trump has done, I just remember that they voted for him again after he caused an insurrection against the United States in an attempt to illegally overthrow a free and fair election.
If a voter can find their way to excusing that, they will find their way to excusing a third term. Here's how: "Yeah it's not ideal, but what am I supposed to do? Vote for a Democrat? They would be worse. We are choosing the lesser of two evils." Works every time.
The US elected Biden after Trump's disastrous first term, and immediately followed up with Trump's totalitarian self-destructive second term.
Changing leaders isn't enough to fix it. You all broke it, and until you re-establish norms for democracy, reinforce the checks and balances, and start holding criminals who hold office accountable, it's not going to get better.
I wish you luck, you will need it :/
The bribing might be costly but people are more than willing to buy Trump's merch.
But there's a more fundamental problem, where neither party has offered suitable presidential candidates in the last 3 elections. Your system needs a bit of a reset. The Democrats have to return to their roots, and the Republicans have to get over the Cult of Trump. But i'm hopeful in time these two problems will resolve themselves in time and not mutually reinforce each other. Trumps Republican Party has a hard expiration date, and the Democrats will eventually have to listen to their voters if they want to win elections.
so what?
We've long dreamed about spending 3 months in the USA. Driving across Montana. Living in NYC. Just being there, absorbing it all. (We've both been a bunch of times and love it.)
We're both white Australians. Middle-aged. Low risk. But there's no way I'm travelling to the USA now. Why would I bother? If I need some North America I'll go see Canada. Or we'll just visit Europe.
The risk of being turned away at the border always existed.
Yes it’s drastically increased now, but that’s a quantitative change which will have a quantitative effect.
What we are seeing now is a qualitative change in traveling behavior and that’s reflecting the qualitative change in the severity of punishment that may occur if there is a problem while trying to enter.
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My colleagues outside the US say that a big part of why they are bailing on the US is the public response.
They see France protest over their own internal retirement politics. They don’t see the US public protest over global destabilization through our politics.
It isn’t just Trump. The American people are completely failing to read the room.
So I am done supporting my fellow Americans as much as possible too. Enjoy your conference randos, but fuck me food and shelter and healthcare seem a bit more essential.
Take a day off work to go to a rally or peaceful protest? “At will” employment means you can be fired the next day, no reason given. You got fired? Virtually all workers in the US get their health insurance through their employer, so now you and your family just lost access to medical care. It’s a really rough job market in many sectors, so it could take a few months to get a job. But since you got fired without cause, you can at least try to claim some unemployment benefits. In California, that maxes out at something like $450 a week.
Meanwhile in France if they want to fire you they have to give like 3 months notice (or pay you out for that time). Healthcare is socialized so no worries there. And if you still can’t find a job in a few months IIRC there’s fairly reasonable social benefits available.
That’s why other countries have social security. It provides freedom and courage.
No logical breakdown from an armchair is going stop parents with hungry kids.
This is the failing to read the room part I mentioned. Our biology is composed of biology not philosophy. It is self selecting. It’s biological imperative is select self.
Ok good you got some sort of Excel sheet breakdown. That’s just words.
This is what I’m talking about; American public is so dissociated due to economics that straight up ignores externalities. 8 billion people are the externality and it’s going to be hard for 300 million to ignore them and live in their narcissistic bubble much longer. Third world countries have rebuilt and don’t see the specialness in Murica or the point in sewing their shirts if they’re going to be so low affect.
Americans have to change not because of some philosophical position but because of physical reality not really caring about the excuses of 300 million; only half of which is cogent, and half of that actually intelligent. It’s not looking good, Bob.
The reality is that it's not that hard. It requires learning new things and getting out of your comfort zone, lowering your expectations a bit and not expecting to do one thing and be done. This is how protest movements have always been.
Find something that aligns with one of your values and show up. Learn about more actions, join a chat group or calendar, and find what you can go to. Do not expect there to be one massive action that everyone shows up to first time. Do not burn yourself out.
Humans are social. Just showing up on the street reminds people that things aren't OK and there is something to protest about. Over time this builds people's consciousness and more people practice taking collective action.
I mean consume less media. Stuff.
Take burden off workers in the sweatshops and learn to sew a shirt. How many new shirts does a person need a year? 2-3? That’s like what, a cold December?
Be a human not a battery in a Matrix pod propping up ad companies and Hollywood.
We live in a Newspeak bubble; it’s freedom to stare at screen.
Local culture in the US is hyper-normalized around money making metrics.
Boomers did all the drugs and lived. They convinced GenX and Millennials to Netflix chill, order grubhub and watch AI content
It’s so bizarre
Edit: this is what gets attention not blocking roads https://finance.yahoo.com/news/target-badly-misses-on-earnin...
Presumably they're working there because it's the least-bad option? If so, removing it so they have to go with the next-least-bad option might not be much of a help.
This answer is a euphemism for “don’t rock my boat.” Because if they ain’t sewing your shirts, you are. Your freedom from such is due to blowing Vietnam (and elsewhere) to a crater, fostering existing conditions. Not exactly informed consent.
The rest of the world doesn’t buy this analysis. They lived being oppressed by US military. They see Americans as the Taliban, not a great white hope Americans have been propagandized to see themselves as.
We know; you’re scared of change because you have seen your lived experience and know you cannot grow a potato.
But you’re just a meat suit and your personal story and literacy aren’t anyone else’s concern. And that’s under the political norm. You prefer no guarantee of healthcare. The risk someone else will obsolete your research. Oo so titillating.
Fine, have it your way. Under the American norms I hereby give zero fucks your meat suit exists.
Fortunately for me I have generational wealth thanks to the building and auto booms in the US, and EE degrees, hands on building useful machines and technology. SWEs exist so long as open compute platforms exist and there’s no guarantee governments around the world will forever allow that.
Should you find yourself shut out of employment opportunities, thoughts n prayers.
What I found upon arriving was an unserious mob of hippies laughing and taking selfies to post on social media. I'd made signs supporting the rule of law. The signs of the other participants were an unfocused smattering of various political goals from "tax the rich" to banning Teslas. They included what I thought was an excessive about of profanity and crude insults. I think these are unserious people and what they're doing is performative and utterly pointless.
I do not see any viable action for individual citizens to take. Everyone out there clamoring for people to do something is just pushing their own political agenda. We had an election, one side won, that's how things go, ok. What's happened since however is a clear violation of the US Constitution in more ways than one can count, but it seems there is basically no one aware of or concerned about this. I feel like I'm at a football game where one side just took out a gun and shot the referee and while he lies on the floor bleeding to death both sides are still arguing over whether there was a foul or not.
You have to find your people. It can take a while. Change takes time, big social movements were decades into the making in the fringe before they reached the mainstream consciousness.
1. given a sober, nonpartisan review of past history, how far is too far for this administration?
2. what are you willing to do to stop it, how much are you willing to sacrifice.
i suspect that nothing the administration has done to date really clears the first bar. be prepared for the day it will, save your energy till then.
The only thing you can do is convince people, I think. Most folks are trying to stay in their bubble.
Get involved with your preferred local political party. Push for policy preferences that won't drive turnout for the opposing party and won't give that party a chance to nominate a clown and then still win.
Going to protests is usually not much fun. There are all kinds of people there that you might not feel much in common with. People will make signs that focus on things you don't care about. This is normal! Protests can also easily burn a person out, so people try to have fun if they can because it's important to sustain pressure. The fact that someone dresses up, has a joke on their sign, meets a friend and smiles, or takes a selfie is not an indictment of the person or their protest.
Resist the urge to wallow in contempt for those people, particularly when you haven't done anything that has been effective.
Then they're not looking.
They see weekend warriors focused on their paychecks.
They don’t see coast to coast collective pushback for long term stability. Sure, America is big and pockets of tribal thought.
And so it’s unreliable. A hodge podge of asocial cults flip flopping around the rules every 2-4 years because of its distributed, async social nature, does not make a reliable ally.
Still not reading the room.
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The conferences and scientists leaving are the results of decades of policy undermining education and human rights, coupled with the rise of the alt-right, normalization of racism and misogyny, with a soupçon of neo-nazism that allowed a populist regime to rise to power. All of that was the pile of flammable things. The extrajudicial deportations, conferences and scientists leaving, and tourism crashing are the first tendrils of smoke rising in the corner. It's not too late for America to fix it.
Ignoring the original topic and the rest of the comment, this part sounds like actually a useful thing?
If the different groups don't converge, that suggests that at least one of the consensuses is being driven by something other than verifiable facts (groupthink? conflicts of interest? politics?). Which I'd think is a useful thing to bring to the surface like that.
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It is annoyingly typical that they managed to interview a "historian who studies international conferences" yet fail to contextualise how large 6 conferences is in the scheme of things. Thanks to the Magic of the Internet [0] I can see that hundreds of thousands of conferences have taken place since their first appearance in the late eighteenth century which isn't that informative (averages to >333/year over 3 centuries I suppose).
[0] https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8008585/jessica-rein... & https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/52195/1/BJH2300063_R.pdf
The fact that 6 of them found this a big enough issue to move their conferences out of the U.S. is a huge deal.
The real impact will be felt 2-3 years from now.
https://sigdat.org/calls/bids2025
The 'interrogation' before even boarding the flight was just ridiculous. And the process repeated after landing. Jeez.
They have one example of a meeting moved. The other one is going to Canada, but most attendees are Canadian students (hmmm), the other one is cancelled because of funding cuts (that's not a fear of coming to the US),
As a scientist, a lot of these conferences are nothing but rackets. Organizers can make a lot of money from them if they can get enough attendees. I've been approached by multiple conference organizers and when you start to look it's clearly a joke (same with many journals).
I'd also wonder how many of these conferences were teetering to start with (look how many happened ever 3 years, a good sign they can't get critical mass).
I thought nature was about publishing research. This reads like a political opinion piece but is published as "news"?
The author has other similar articles like these about the "US brain drain":
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01540-y
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01489-y
What would help me get an accurate picture is how many conferences are typically held per month in the US and how has that number changed but instead we get fluff like:
"Some meetings have been put on hold" - which meetings?
"Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere" - Which conferences, what % of the total? more specifics?
"Organizers of these meetings say that tougher rules around visas and border control — alongside other policies introduced by US President Donald Trump’s administration — are discouraging international scholars from attending events on US soil. In response, they are moving the conferences to countries such as Canada, in a bid to boost attendance." - Which organizers?
EDIT: I found this resource which would be interesting to examine for trends: https://conferenceindex.org/conferences/science
EDIT2: there are some specific anecdotal examples towards the bottom of the paywalled article. This is still not meeting what I would consider accurate non-opinionated reporting.
Nature does both: scientific news and scientific literature.
> Which conferences, what % of the total? more specifics?
This is probably the paywall getting you, because many specific conferences are listed.
> At the moment, there are no data available on how widespread the issue is
(Not surprising, remember it’s only May!)
Also, at the end of the article they mention some other conferences that seem unconcerned
Or would you mind sharing a snippet that expressed any political belief of the authors?
I could not find either
As for your specific questions, they are answered even in the paywalled version. Just keep reading past the first sentence
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The claim: b/c one particular conference will not be held in the USA then "Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears". And another poster here claims that two (Gaaad! TWO!) Canadians "skipped a US conference last month due to the 'dramatical worse general climate.'"
What a crock. This is further evidence that Trump's very existence causes some people to fall into pearl-clutching irrationality.
> Organizers of the International Conference on Comparative Cognition have made a similar call. Its 33rd annual conference next year will take place outside the United States for the first time in the society’s history, in Montreal, Canada.
> The Northwest Cognition & Memory (NOWCAM) meeting relocated its meeting earlier this month from Western Washington University in Bellingham to Victoria, Canada.
> The International Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has cancelled its conference, originally planned for August 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee, because cuts to federal funding meant it was “no longer financially viable”.
> The 2026 Cities on Volcanoes conference in Bend, Oregon, has been postponed to 2030 or 2032.
> The International X-ray Absorption Society cancelled its upcoming 19th conference in Chicago, Illinois
Your comment should be taken down for being a crock. This is further evidence that Trump's very existence causes some people to blindly worship him.
e.g. https://healthjournalism.internews.org/article/decolonizing-...
This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
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I suspect the opposition party is literally just fear-bombing social media with what ifs and AI slop to further divide folks.
But if some conferences or even colleges full of people susceptible to that kind of misinformation begin to fail, I'm all for it.
Yes the rest of the world is wrong and Trump has the truth.
Are the chances of getting deported high? No of course not, but America is certainly not rolling out the red carpet for international scientists right now.
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-f...
There were a few other stories that made the news like a British citizen that was prevented entry to Canada and then arrested trying to return to the US (who wanted to work illegally in Canada but admittedly treated very badly by the Americans).
- https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-rele...
"Claims that CBP is searching more electronic media due to the administration change are false. CBP’s search numbers are consistent with increases since 2021, and less than 0.01% of travelers have their devices searched. These searches are conducted to detect digital contraband, terrorism-related content, and information relevant to visitor admissibility, all of which play a critical role in national security."
- https://www.trade.gov/feature-article/march-2025-air-passeng...
"Non-U.S. citizen air passenger arrivals to the United States from foreign countries totaled:
It's true that there is real confusion and fear. I have coworkers (I work for a large US company with offices all over the world) that share worries. This includes people with green cards, other working visas, and foreign visitors. There's plenty of travel and zero issues. People are worried is true.In Canada there we also have a lot of people with strong feelings/emotional response to Trump's 51st state nonsense and tariffs. There is a real feeling of betrayal. There are practically zero issues with Canadians traveling to the US.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250522/dq250...
"In March, Canadian residents returned from 2.7 million trips to the United States, representing a 24.0% decrease from March 2024 and accounting for 63.9% of all trips taken by Canadian residents in March 2025.
Meanwhile, US residents took 1.2 million trips to Canada in March, down 6.6% from March 2024 and representing 81.3% of all non-resident trips to Canada in March 2025. "
Basically the worries are real, fueled to a large extent by these sorts of articles, and in my opinion politically motivated (and I don't like Trump either) but the likelihood of running into problems is small and unclear if larger than it ever was.
I'm sure the CBP would never dare to lie about such things in a way that potentially puts their egomaniacal boss in a more favorable light than he deserves.
A few things to consider:
- Organizations take a while to change. Is it more likely that the CBP is operating more or less as it has been or that it had some dramatic changes?
- Searching phones takes time and effort. To scale up this in a significant way while still supporting similar amount of traffic would require more people? extended waiting times?
- Do you know people who travel to the US? Have they had their electronic devices searched? Have we seen a surge of stories about electronic devices being searched? The numbers they claim are less than ~450 a month (0.01% * 4.5M). Do we have evidence to suggest the scale is significantly different?
- The CBP could simply have said nothing. What would be their reason for explicitly addressing this question? If it's a lie wouldn't they be concerned e.g. with needing to deal with this down the line? Do you think Trump reads these reports and rewards some person in the CBP for this? Feels very unlikely.
- CBP is a huge org. 65k people or so. If there was some major change or lie then presumably it'd leak somehow?
very true based on my own observation. Source: I and many acquaintances I've know have crossed the border multiple times. It's completely the media.
The natural urge to find a cause results in externalizing blame, elites being one targeted group. It makes sense that lashing out at them is an attempt to heal the status wound, even though the chance that this succeeds is zero.
I think it's a fine argument to make, and I'd even agree -- it's just put really obliquely.
A revised version would read:
Over the past half-century, shaped by civil-rights gains, demographic shifts, and the dollar’s reserve-currency burdens, one once-dominant segment of the population has felt its social standing erode. Its members still remember when the political, social, and economic order tilted decisively in their favor.
Politics now orbits the "status wound" this group carries. To soothe it, they cast blame outward, at elites, newcomers, or any symbol of the new order. Each target offers momentary relief, but none can restore what was lost.
This group also has a grievance against scientists, whom they see as complicit because of their campaign against climate change, among other things.
The present administration is heavily weighted towards supporting the backlash from this group. This weighs heavily on scientists, and is seen as a win for the former group.
Another way to state this is that those in power today are out for revenge because they feel as though the past ~50 years has been punishing to them. So they are lashing out against those who’ve gained in that period of time. Science and intellectualism in general is one of those gains.
This doesn't really work when you're trafficking in "explanations" about how Group A thinks invented by Group B for the purpose of delegitimizing Group A's disagreements with them.
You’re displaying a form of racism by portraying this as about “lost status” rather than the decreasing material well-being of the public and the collapse of technocratic systems benefitting people in a regime of inflated credentials.
Your theory doesn’t explain, eg, why Trump is more popular than a typical Republican with minorities. Nor does it explain Obama voters who switched to Trump.
While you dressed up the language, you’re still just calling others “istaphobes” to avoid contending with real class issues — and making an ad hominem argument rather than contending with their legitimate disagreement.
When you see those black and white photos of people hanging black people, or read stories about kids putting glass in the food and chairs of children going to an integrated school, so many of those people are still alive.
Trump was in his second year of college when the civil rights act passed and it was official policy black people were supposed to be treated like people. The civil rights act passing wasn't some official decree where the whole of the US respected that.
Most scientists are rational people. If they obey US immigration rules, they SHOULD never have a problem. There have recently been a few horrifying stories where this wasn't the case, but those are the exception and not the rule.
It's crazy how common the meme of "aloofness signals intelligence" has become among the folks at the top of the bell curve.
Sure, they SHOULD never have a problem. But, increasingly under Trump, they MIGHT have a problem despite this, especially if they are not white and/or come from a country that Trump is currently feuding with, and/or have publicly spoken out against Trump, Netanyahu, or their allies. One shouldn't base any serious decision on how things SHOULD be.
I suspect not.
Typically folks who attend conferences fly over, stay the week, maybe even stay for another week as a vacation, then head back.
If anything, this is in the territory of acquiring a temporary visa.
Scientists who follow the immigration rules aren't illegally immigrating either.
I got the reaction I was expecting. I did flag the article, but I guess it hasn't yet accumulated enough flag votes.
It is possible to address illegal immigration in a manner that doesn’t deter those visiting who will very likely return. Unfortunately whether it is the result of agency-wide policy changes or a few rogue officers, there’s certainly some new anxiety up for those wanting to travel here.