True, not much data yet, but a cery real day to day factor for conference organizers. We have had two Canadians skip a US conference last month due to the dramatical worse general climate. Zoom instead. This is NOT just about immigration and passport control. It is the new ugly American zeitgeist that changes enthusiasm.
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??.
mjevans · 1h ago
The 2nd, and supposed to be final, term of the current US President is scheduled to end on Jan 20th, 2029.
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.
Spooky23 · 50m ago
The genie is out of the bottle, the die is cast, etc. We’re not going back to what was before.
I’d only put 60/40 odds on the 2028 election not being temporarily suspended due to a state of emergency.
rogerrogerr · 11m ago
60/40 feels very pessimistic to me (meaning I think the election is more than 60% likely to occur on Nov 7, 2028 and the results heeded more or less as usual).
I bet you could find more than a few people here to take the other side of 60/40 odds in a $100 bet.
rogerrogerr · 2m ago
In a different comment so people can vote on this idea independently: I am not a Trump supporter, but I have many Trump-supporting people I interact with on a level that I don’t think they’re lying to me.
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.
ygjb · 43m ago
Sorry neighbours, but it's not about Trump. Trump is one man. The Republican party is effectively captured by that one mans 77,302,580 supporters.
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 :/
jagger27 · 1h ago
Ottawa has plenty of event spaces, poor direct airport routes though. I wouldn’t count out Calgary and Edmonton either.
MegaDeKay · 3h ago
This is bound to happen for a lot of other events besides scientific conferences. I know of a guy that wouldn't go to a retrogaming convention for fears of being detained at the border.
nssnsjsjsjs · 1h ago
Its not just like you get refused entry and get sent on a return flight, there is risk of incarceration, rummaging through your digital life etc. It could be very disruptive and negative.
xeonmc · 1h ago
There is also the risk of being sent to completely unrelated continents based on eugenic preconceptions.
cma · 51m ago
There's a risk of life imprisonment in a concentration camp in a third country.
perihelions · 11m ago
There's a risk of torture and execution in the who-knows-what camps the US is flying people to in Libya and South Sudan. Libya is a hotzone for modern slavery, too.
abnercoimbre · 1h ago
Yes, I run tech conferences and international attendance is dropping rapidly this year (we're shifting to aggressive local marketing, but it's still sad.)
braaaahp · 1h ago
Won’t be attending local conferences anymore.
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.
cshimmin · 1h ago
One thing you need to keep in mind is that in the US things are stacked against people who would want to protest or engage in any kind of activism.
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.
braaaahp · 34m ago
What you need to keep in mind is once enough frogs are boiling things get worse fast.
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.
Spooky23 · 43m ago
It’s hard to protest. There’s no single movement, it’s just a bunch of different people. Stuff needs to get a lot worse.
braaaahp · 11m ago
I don’t mean protest.
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
I went to a protest. I was anxious about being photographed and added to some biometric database to be used for who knows what purposes. My wife and I had a serious discussion about whether to go, the possible risks, the possibility of violence, but I ultimately convinced her to go as our civic responsibility. I left our phones at home as a precaution so as to avoid being geolocated to the site.
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.
tbrownaw · 25m ago
> I do not see any viable action for individual citizens to take.
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.
jeromegv · 26m ago
There are various activist movements, groups, interests, communities.
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.
libraryatnight · 1h ago
Americans are doing stuff. I call my reps and their vms are full. I go to their offices and there are lots of other people there. There's been protests at state capitals, Bernie & AOC have been giving speeches and zoom meetings about organizing and canvasing. Lawyers are suing and judges are trying to use the system despite the supreme court gone mad. It's tough to get a big group photo, but people are doing stuff. I'm as angry and jaded as anybody, but I dislike this defeated "nobody is doing enough so fuck it" thing I keep seeing. It's laying the groundwork a self fulfilling prophecy.
burnt-resistor · 1h ago
This, Harvard, WHO, NIH, and NSF changes create that sucking sound you hear, a brain drain, and people deciding not to go to the US or to leave. Such myopic stupidity in the White House weakening America's power and reputation.
api · 57m ago
When he started talking about a golden age I knew he was going to drive it straight into the ground.
itsjustaclock · 3h ago
It’s fascinating that people still see these things as new or unique to our current administration. This has been an issue for decades that were often ignored or minimized because it only affected smaller more marginalized groups of people. For example conferences involving HIV/AIDS had to contend with these issues for decades due to the blanket ban on HIV+ individuals from entering the country, even for a scientific conference. Often the conferences would continue leading to schisms in the communities and competing conferences that would ultimately disagree on fundamental principles in science and policy.
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 · 2h ago
It seems new and unique, given that conferences (and scientists) are leaving?
ygjb · 25m ago
You know how if you pile lots of flammable things in the corner of your garage and it's fine for years, and then a toddler strolls through with a book of matches, then suddenly you get a new and unique fire?
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.
tbrownaw · 1h ago
> leading to schisms in the communities and competing conferences that would ultimately disagree on fundamental principles in science and policy.
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.
mattnewton · 2h ago
It’s a question of degree
roenxi · 1h ago
Has anyone done the legwork to demonstrate the degree? The linked article is lists around 6 conferences. Which is not a huge number, in the grand scheme of things, given how anti-Trump the US academy seems to be. More than 5, less than 10 and I assume conferences move around fairly regularly.
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).
It's far too early to say. You can't move a conference to a different country on a short notice. You can only hold it with whatever audience you can get, postpone it, or cancel it. For larger events, it's already too late to move events scheduled for 2026, and possibly even for 2027. Maybe there will be some data in a couple of years, but until then, anecdotes and informed guesses are the best you can have.
ericye16 · 1h ago
I'm a Canadian who moved to the SF bay area after graduating. A lot of my smartest friends who came with me at the same time are actively taking steps to move back due to the political environment.
molticrystal · 2h ago
Isn't there a history of security researchers and open source programmers being detained or threatened when visiting the US? So the same thing is being done to the US's domestic researchers as well now?
assimpleaspossi · 19m ago
There seems to be more fear mongering than reality here. Why would a scientist coming to the US for a conference be picked up and sent to El Salvador (or some such)? Do they really believe these things are happening to everyone? Are they spending too much time on Reddit instead of doing research?
This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
GenerocUsername · 2m ago
I had to scroll to far too find sanity in this thread.
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.
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).
YZF · 3h ago
Can't read the whole thing because paywall.
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":
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?
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.
shusaku · 3h ago
> I thought nature was about publishing research. This reads like a political opinion piece but is published as "news"?
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.
bn-l · 3h ago
What about specific percentages?
shusaku · 2h ago
No specific percentages
> 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
mgraczyk · 3h ago
Would you mind explaining where in the article the author gives an opinion, as opposed to stating uncontested facts that would be newsworthy to scientists?
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
No comments yet
kelseyfrog · 3h ago
This will heal the status wound.
actionfromafar · 3h ago
?
kelseyfrog · 3h ago
Half of politics can be explained by framing it around the idea that for a sizable chunk of the population the last 50 years have inflicted a wound to status. The civil rights era changes, demographic changes, and the consequences of the Triffin dilemma leave a large group of people with the living memory that they had more status in the past than they do now.
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.
zmgsabst · 43m ago
Counterpoint:
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.
No comments yet
tupac_speedrap · 3h ago
Mate, not everything in the world is some 4D chess conspiracy. I think it's more likely they just don't want to get send to Guantanamo Bay or El Salvador tbh.
i80and · 3h ago
If I'm reading the user right, and I'm not positive I am, they're more framing the people who support the administration's (reprehensible) agenda as being on a revenge kick for losing a small amount of their original privileged status.
I think it's a fine argument to make, and I'd even agree -- it's just put really obliquely.
kelseyfrog · 2h ago
You read it correctly. In an attempt to appear less partisan, I made the writing too oblique. My apologies.
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.
tbrownaw · 37m ago
> In an attempt to appear less partisan
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.
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 · 2h ago
Edit: I misinterpreted the parent comment, apologies.
jfengel · 1h ago
He's not referring to the scientists. He's referring to a large subset of supporters of the present administration, stereotypically lower middle class white men. They have seen other groups (women, black people, Hispanics, gay people, etc) gaining rights over the last half century or so, while they are no better off and often worse off.
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.
roxolotl · 1h ago
The parent is saying the status wound is being experienced by those doing the firing and detaining.
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.
mindslight · 40m ago
Though just to be very clear here, at every step of the way this group has voted for and voraciously supported the very same elites that have been pushing hardest on the accelerator pedal for their problems. The Dollar's status as a reserve currency was not itself a burden. The problem was caused by the Republican Party's continually trumpeted fake "fiscal responsibility" whereby the surplus was still centralized (monetary inflation), but the proceeds were handed to Wall Street to bid up asset bubbles instead of being spent on policies that would have helped Main Street.
anonymousiam · 1h ago
This article seems like political flamebait.
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.
sorcerer-mar · 1h ago
> A rational person would totally be fine with a non-zero chance of being sent to an El Salvadorean torture camp for the rest of their lives with no due process even when directly ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States... the chance of it happening to you is probably pretty low (though of course we actually don't have a good way to know since people are being whisked away without even chances to contact their lawyers)!
It's crazy how common the meme of "aloofness signals intelligence" has become among the folks at the top of the bell curve.
cozzyd · 40m ago
I can tell you my European colleagues have reservations about attending collaboration meetings in the US
cma · 46m ago
How much can you assure them there will be minimal due process if there is a problem?
anonymousiam · 41m ago
What you should be asking is; what would happen if I illegally immigrated to some country other than the US, where they have no guarantee of due process?
redserk · 2m ago
Since when is visiting a conference illegally immigrating?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :/
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
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.
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 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.
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.
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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 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.
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.
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.
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.