Recently, I attended a West Coast conference on the latest research findings in cosmology and found myself sitting in a faculty dining hall with colleagues from around the country. If it had taken place a few months earlier, our conversation would have been filled with debates on the morning’s presentations, but now everything had changed. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s attacks on universities and research funding, the question we struggled with was: “When is it time to leave the U.S. and establish our research programs elsewhere?”
One colleague planned to enroll their children in an international school to learn French in case the family had to leave the country in the next few years. Another, whose home institution has been under particularly fierce attacks by the government, said they would stay and fight to support their students, but only so long as their family remained safe. At the same meeting, I heard from a Canadian researcher whose institution was compiling a list of American scientists now considered vulnerable.
That list is likely long. In a poll this spring of U.S. researchers published in Nature, a whopping 75% of respondents reported considering leaving the country. This was most pronounced among respondents at the graduate and postgraduate levels, whose careers are less established and therefore most at risk of being affected by curtailed job opportunities.
I observe this at meeting after meeting with faculty, postdocs, and graduate students, several of whom are already reaching out to explore positions in other countries. At times, the conversations become so overwhelming that someone will ask for a change of subject, a moment of relief when we can return to the scientific debates that brought us together in the first place.
In ordinary times, these debates tend to center on some of the biggest open questions in physics, like seeking to understand how the universe evolved from the seconds after the Big Bang to the present day. My colleagues include theorists and experimentalists who build models, design experiments, and compile data to disentangle these cosmological mysteries. Some have received prestigious awards in recognition of their scientific contributions. Some have been supported by national fellowships for their promise and potential. These are the rock stars that you don’t want to leave.
Most of us are early and mid-career researchers who had been planning a full tenure at U.S. universities. But it is difficult to imagine what our jobs will look like in just three or five years. The sudden grant suspensions and terminations in recent months, coupled with current delays in assessing submitted proposals and budgetary cuts proposed by the Trump administration, point to a significant risk of a long-term research crisis. Labs may have to shut down. Graduate programs may wither in scope and ambition. Research scientists may lose their jobs. I saw a senior professor break down in tears, talking about a colleague who may have to fire his entire research group due to grant terminations. Another wondered aloud if all he will do in the future is read about the scientific discoveries being made elsewhere.
While it is too soon to see how this will play out in practice, it is undeniable that exodus is on the mind of U.S. researchers and that other countries are taking notice. The European Union has recently announced a € 500 million initiative to recruit American scientists. Individual countries, such as Australia, France, and the Netherlands, have started their own dedicated recruitment programs. The potential loss to our country is staggering, considering our preeminent role to date as a scientific leader. In my own field of physics, Americans have comprised over 40% of all Nobel prizes awarded between 1901-2024, far above that of any other country. All of this is now at risk, and the damage may be irreparable for generations.
To avoid this imminent crisis, Congress must reject the proposed cuts to science funding and continue investing in long-term research across scientific fields. Without such action, the country’s scientific engine will be significantly compromised, forcing us to rely on temporary fixes to keep it running. In this emergency state, support for junior researchers must be prioritized. Private foundations and industry sources can make a significant impact by providing stopgap awards that support graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty during this turbulent time. While it is not viable for such support to permanently replace the gap left behind by the federal government, it would help keep science talent in the country for the immediate future, stemming an exodus.
I sit here contemplating this unknown future from my office at Princeton University, in a building where many hallways have a portrait of Albert Einstein. Einstein moved to Princeton in 1933 to escape Nazi Germany and found respite to continue his groundbreaking work on gravitational physics in this quiet town. Shortly after his arrival, he was quoted in an undergraduate publication advising students to “Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.” This sentiment reminds us of the humility that accompanies any scientific pursuit and a scientist’s commitment to the betterment of our world. As a country, we have for decades strongly supported and rightfully reaped the benefits of this dedication. But now, nearly a century after Einstein’s arrival, we must ask ourselves how we envision our future.
For now, I am committed to staying, motivated by a desire to support the younger generation currently in training. To me, fighting for the future of science in this country means doing my day-to-day job to the best of my ability, despite the strong headwinds. It is an attempt to save what is possible, so that junior researchers who leave the country now may have something to return to in the future.
I simply cannot shake the hope that the time will come again when Einstein’s words resonate, and my colleagues and I can gather around the lunch table and return to discussing the science that excites us most.
Mariangela Lisanti is a professor of physics at Princeton University, a research scientist at the Flatiron Institute, and a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. Her views as expressed here are not necessarily those of any employer or other institution.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.