Krauss: Trump’s War on Science

To do all this, we will also need to recruit the brightest minds from all over the world. Instead, the current administration seems bent on disallowing talented foreign scholars and students from studying and working in this country. In the past, many of these students—including Elon Musk—chose to stay in the United States after their studies ended and have created innovative technologies that have bolstered the US economy in myriad ways.

The culture wars in higher education have hurt both teaching and research, but the current policy of dismantling the government–science partnership that has helped drive US leadership in science and technology is worse. Leadership in these fields may soon pass to Europe—or, worse, to China. A great deal of damage has already been done, and it may soon be too late to fix it, as laboratories close down and first-rate researchers either leave their fields or move abroad.

Curiosity-driven science and research are crucial to the economic success of our nation. They must not be made subservient to political goals. It is worth remembering the words of Robert Wilson, the first director of the Fermi National Laboratory, which houses the nation’s largest particle accelerator. In 1969, when Congress asked him whether the particle accelerator would aid in the defence of the nation, Wilson responded, “It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”