The Cabinet has approved a plan to entice US academics disillusioned with the Trump administration to Ireland. There is nothing particularly novel about the proposal. During the second World War the then taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, established the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies which succeeded in attracting a number of high-profile academics escaping the Nazi regime, most notably Nobel prize winning theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger.
In more recent times Science Foundation Ireland , which was folded into Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland – last year, ran programmes aimed at attracting international researchers in strategically important areas and their teams to Ireland. The latest initiative is best seen as a reboot of this ongoing effort in the context of the opportunity afforded by the US president’s assault on elite universities, certain academic disciplines and general hostility towards migrants and free expression.
Ireland is not the only state to see the opportunity. Other European countries have set out their stalls in recent months. And money will talk in the coming competition for mobile talent.
The bill for moving a leading researcher and their team across the Atlantic and setting them up can run to millions of euro. France has already earmarked €13 million for this purpose and the United Kingdom has set aside £50 million. Spain has a €45 million war chest.
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No figure has been put by James Lawless, the Minster for Higher Education, on the budget for the Irish campaign. He presumably has his eye on some of the €500 million that the European Commission has set aside to “make Europe a magnet for researchers”. Equally there are few details about how it will work, other than that the exchequer will co-fund salaries with the universities.
Ireland is a little late to the party and risks being outgunned, but opportunities clearly exist in leveraging existing relationships and targeting promising researchers, including some further down the food chain. Assuming, that is, that President Trump doesn’t change direction.
