Of note is that recently, top US undergrads (in physical sciences) are actually going abroad for PhDs. I think at a statistically significant rate but we’ll have to do surveys.
It's my anecdote from my top-10-ranked U.S. program with a small sample size, but I've heard similar from colleagues at two other programs. A lot of US PhD admission cohorts have been dramatically smaller the last 2 years, so some of it is just spreading the risk in terms of applications and only getting offers abroad.
But in our case, one student actively turned down an offer from a top-3 private university in the US (ranking in our discipline) for a UK university. He specifically cited the funding landscape, since that university had had many of its grants canceled at the time, but of course did not rule out returning post PhD. He was a top student!
It is not necessarily obvious to all. Some choose to stay out of a belief that there is a chance that order can be restored or perhaps created for the first time and that it is worth staying to participate in the work toward the prefered order.
This happens in all sorts of queer communities. Some do leave for the greener pastures, but some choose to stay and fight to build a supporting community where they already live. Some believe that they should not have to flee to the gayborhood in order to live their lives.
If every pro-choice individual left a pro-life community, the pro-life community will suddenly have zero votes against pro-life candidates/policies.
If all of the immigrants (or at least the ones with skin colors that trigger people, because no one seems to mind a white Swiss immigrant), knowing that many in the US are openly hostile toward them, simply left or chose to never enter in the first place, the US would never have a chance to develop a tolerance for these peoples.
Many Jewish people, given the chance to flee, chose to stay in Hitler's Germany in order to help others flee/hide, or support others in the area doing things like getting groceries to families that were at greater risk of harm.
Taken to an extreme, everyone at risk in a community leaving would only distill the hostility in to a pure un-hindered hatred that will take far more effort to address in the long run.
It is a personal decision that any who find themselves in hostile territory must make. Fight, flight, or freeze?
> Taken to an extreme, everyone at risk in a community leaving would only distill the hostility in to a pure un-hindered hatred that will take far more effort to address in the long run
I think I understand the instinct behind this, but I’m not sure if it’s actually mechanically true.
What I’ve seen in practice is that when there’s an exodus of any major part of any group, then the group effectively dissolves
You’re right there may be some kind of final consolidation period of dogmatic people, which often splinters, but it mostly seems like exodus leads to long term dissolution, which seems like the goal of leaving it
If it is possible to get enough to leave such that the underlying community collapses, then it can work.
But if the effected population is 10%? 1%? If those individuals aren't in positions integral to the existence of the community?
If the 1% that left say the US were the "top 1%", then that would certainly cause waves, though I'm not sure it would completely dissolve the US. If on the otherhand the 1% that left were...hold on what's a 1% demographic..."everyone with rheumatoid arthritis", "those suffering from celiac disease", "people with natural red hair", "american indians", "chinese americans", etc then the US that remains is probably not a whole lot different from the US that was.
Brief research points to networks surviving random departure at rates as high as 50% (a random half of town folk leaving for different reasons) and loss of core individuals (healtchare/teachers/admin) at between 10-25%.
It seems there is indeed a threshold where collapse can be triggered by sufficient flight, and of course we've seen this in digital communities like digg.
I guess I'm just looking at like, if you're say a thousand racial minorities in an on average racist city of 100,000, and you all leave, the ratio of racists to non-racists will increase assuming the minorities aren't racist themselves. There is now less reason for the non-racists to campaign on behalf of the minorities because now there are fewer instances of injustice, and less reason for the racists to change their minds because they are less likely to engage in any racially driven encounters that give them the opportunity to change their mind.
I can see the appeal of leaving. You do the math, figure it's never going to change or won't change soon enough, the impact on your life is too great, leaving doesn't cost as much as staying does, and so you leave.
But suppose you've got lots of friends/family in the area. Elders you take care of. A neighbor whose pie is almost literally "to die for". The racism sucks, but your boss isn't racist and there's really only the one guy at work, so it's really just the subway that's a problem. Now staying is less expensive than leaving so you stay and make the most of it - vote to get someone like you on the city council, organize or participate in a support group, see something say something.
There is no one answer to fight or flight. It will always depend on the exact relation between the oppressed and their oppressor(s).
Exactly. I tell people complaining about housing prices in New York City and California this all the time! There are other great places to live. It’s an obvious move if your financial expectations aren’t being met.
I think it's definitely reasonable to consider moving if where you live just isn't worth it for you financially. Still, if you don't like it then leave is generally not great advice instead of asking our politicians to actually support policies that make our lives better.
The amount of Cubans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans Panamanians, etc… who had literally nothing and no resources to their name, who walked or hitched to the United States or Canada to back breaking labor to put their kids into high school is staggering.
Similarly for pretty much every cab driver and worker in Dubai, who is from Bangladesh or India or Kuala Lumpur or whatever…
In fact, I knew a very successful Honduran restaurant owner in Houston, who was deported twice from the U.S. between 1980-2000 finally got his citizenship on the third trip.
That’s how it worked for everyone coming to the United States. You might get a fever and die on a ship sailing from England. Irish and Italian settlers were treated harshly and worked in factories as children. People came from China to California to help build the railroads. This is just a recency bias.
That just turns into a revolving door. People who can’t make it in California moved to Arizona and Texas. Then complained about Arizona and Texas and moved to Florida. Then complained about Florida and are now moving to the next region.
Without ever considering the possibility that things are just less affordable all across the US. There’s multimillion dollar condos even in tier 3 places that aren’t even all that. Like Madison or Pittsburgh. Let alone talking about getting a house in these areas.
We gotta get the government refocused on affordability. That’s really the only way forward. Young people really have to be given a fair shot here.
I find peoples’ recalcitrance to relocate hard to comprehend. They’re always like “ah, but kids, family, work”, while talking about little much other than how they hate where they live, hate their job, can’t stand Sunday lunches with their parents.
I have a kid. I have family. I work. I move continents when I get bored of the one I live on currently.
On which note, hi from Brazil. 9th country in which I have lived.
What is the takeaway from this article? This is just an essay of a family who is deeply privileged enough to have the freedom to relocate to a part of the world that is even more gatekeeping. That is definitely an achievement, but it’s not like this doesn't happen all the time. It would have been nice if this were a more detailed article that talked about wider trends or highlighted the sacrifices she's making and the students she's bringing with her.
I realize this has been happening for a while since the current administration came into power, but for people from other G7 nations, it's kind of nice seeing this happen to the US for once.
Edit: The notes for the first article above indicate that estimates of the mass of the Higgs boson were greatly reduced after the SSC cancelation, allowing the LHC to accomplish its goals with less than half the total power (design maximum of 14 TeV for the LHC, versus 40 TeV for the SSC).
Notice also that the SSC was cut in 1993, under a Democratic congress with Bill Clinton in the executive.
agreeing, though to widen the perspective, it's been happening since long before the current administration, or that before it, were in power.
As a concrete example, my amazing professor left U Illinois for Austria, for an example, several years before the Trump/Biden/Trump again era.
it seems that the unending political battle drama gets tiresome for scientists. I believe some people realize that immersed in that context isn't how they want to spend their lives.
> We need the best and brightest if very country to stay in US.
These are not coherent positions at all.
Frankly I think we need the best looking people, not the most talented/ hard working/ intelligent people anymore, because that might be the only thing AI won’t replace for a while (decades).
Over decades, like all government institutions, NASA devolves into an ineffective bureaucracy with massive cost overruns and operational ineffectiveness.
The economic pressure of national debt allows Trump and DOGE to kick much of the academic intelligentsia out of NASA;
astrophysicist loses all her influence in NASA, dies her hair pink and moves to Europe.
NYT continues to publish idealogical comfort food for its reader base about it (mostly liberal elite professional class) and claims it is “journalism”. People feel good reading it.
Instead of the hard work of intellectual honesty and self reflection of views, people continue to devolve into polarized reptilian thinking.
The Times is behind a wall again. What has further happened in order to make this news in November? The Dutch press reported this back in July.
* https://nu.nl/klimaat/6403448/amerikaanse-topwetenschapper-z...
* https://trouw.nl/wetenschap/sterrenkundige-uit-de-vs-zet-wer...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/07/science/space/holley-bock...
This story can no longer affect the outcome of the election is my cynical guess.
Kelly Holley-Bockelmann
https://kellyholleybockelmann.squarespace.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Holley-Bockelmann
https://x02.me/i/mIORIX.jpeg
Of note is that recently, top US undergrads (in physical sciences) are actually going abroad for PhDs. I think at a statistically significant rate but we’ll have to do surveys.
I find this impossible to believe. Do you have any sources?
It's my anecdote from my top-10-ranked U.S. program with a small sample size, but I've heard similar from colleagues at two other programs. A lot of US PhD admission cohorts have been dramatically smaller the last 2 years, so some of it is just spreading the risk in terms of applications and only getting offers abroad.
But in our case, one student actively turned down an offer from a top-3 private university in the US (ranking in our discipline) for a UK university. He specifically cited the funding landscape, since that university had had many of its grants canceled at the time, but of course did not rule out returning post PhD. He was a top student!
We’ve had a significant increase in applications here in Europe. All the funding cuts leave less positions to apply for in the US
I think this is more what’s happening. People have to apply abroad.
There are simply not as many positions available in the US.
Same. I haven't heard of this at all from collaborators. In fact I hear about more and more graduate students.
studying where?
I imagine the answers will vary in the same way that different universities within the US had different advantage.
UK and Europe primarily for US undergrads. A few went to Canada.
I would guess Canada, EU, UK, Oceania and South East Asia.
lol - why am i getting downvoted for asking where students are going ? HN is really full of a bunch of snowflakes.
Don't worry about it, I got downvoted for answering your questions. Some people just... Downvote.
https://archive.is/9R4M9
https://wallhop.io/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/07/scienc...
I’d love to hear why someone shouldn’t migrate when the environment gets hostile to their way of life?
Seems like an obvious move to me.
It is not necessarily obvious to all. Some choose to stay out of a belief that there is a chance that order can be restored or perhaps created for the first time and that it is worth staying to participate in the work toward the prefered order.
This happens in all sorts of queer communities. Some do leave for the greener pastures, but some choose to stay and fight to build a supporting community where they already live. Some believe that they should not have to flee to the gayborhood in order to live their lives.
If every pro-choice individual left a pro-life community, the pro-life community will suddenly have zero votes against pro-life candidates/policies.
If all of the immigrants (or at least the ones with skin colors that trigger people, because no one seems to mind a white Swiss immigrant), knowing that many in the US are openly hostile toward them, simply left or chose to never enter in the first place, the US would never have a chance to develop a tolerance for these peoples.
Many Jewish people, given the chance to flee, chose to stay in Hitler's Germany in order to help others flee/hide, or support others in the area doing things like getting groceries to families that were at greater risk of harm.
Taken to an extreme, everyone at risk in a community leaving would only distill the hostility in to a pure un-hindered hatred that will take far more effort to address in the long run.
It is a personal decision that any who find themselves in hostile territory must make. Fight, flight, or freeze?
> Taken to an extreme, everyone at risk in a community leaving would only distill the hostility in to a pure un-hindered hatred that will take far more effort to address in the long run
I think I understand the instinct behind this, but I’m not sure if it’s actually mechanically true.
What I’ve seen in practice is that when there’s an exodus of any major part of any group, then the group effectively dissolves
You’re right there may be some kind of final consolidation period of dogmatic people, which often splinters, but it mostly seems like exodus leads to long term dissolution, which seems like the goal of leaving it
Hence “vote with your feet” is the best protest
I think that depends on the scale.
If it is possible to get enough to leave such that the underlying community collapses, then it can work.
But if the effected population is 10%? 1%? If those individuals aren't in positions integral to the existence of the community?
If the 1% that left say the US were the "top 1%", then that would certainly cause waves, though I'm not sure it would completely dissolve the US. If on the otherhand the 1% that left were...hold on what's a 1% demographic..."everyone with rheumatoid arthritis", "those suffering from celiac disease", "people with natural red hair", "american indians", "chinese americans", etc then the US that remains is probably not a whole lot different from the US that was.
Brief research points to networks surviving random departure at rates as high as 50% (a random half of town folk leaving for different reasons) and loss of core individuals (healtchare/teachers/admin) at between 10-25%.
It seems there is indeed a threshold where collapse can be triggered by sufficient flight, and of course we've seen this in digital communities like digg.
I guess I'm just looking at like, if you're say a thousand racial minorities in an on average racist city of 100,000, and you all leave, the ratio of racists to non-racists will increase assuming the minorities aren't racist themselves. There is now less reason for the non-racists to campaign on behalf of the minorities because now there are fewer instances of injustice, and less reason for the racists to change their minds because they are less likely to engage in any racially driven encounters that give them the opportunity to change their mind.
I can see the appeal of leaving. You do the math, figure it's never going to change or won't change soon enough, the impact on your life is too great, leaving doesn't cost as much as staying does, and so you leave.
But suppose you've got lots of friends/family in the area. Elders you take care of. A neighbor whose pie is almost literally "to die for". The racism sucks, but your boss isn't racist and there's really only the one guy at work, so it's really just the subway that's a problem. Now staying is less expensive than leaving so you stay and make the most of it - vote to get someone like you on the city council, organize or participate in a support group, see something say something.
There is no one answer to fight or flight. It will always depend on the exact relation between the oppressed and their oppressor(s).
Exactly. I tell people complaining about housing prices in New York City and California this all the time! There are other great places to live. It’s an obvious move if your financial expectations aren’t being met.
I think it's definitely reasonable to consider moving if where you live just isn't worth it for you financially. Still, if you don't like it then leave is generally not great advice instead of asking our politicians to actually support policies that make our lives better.
I agree with you, I’m just pointing out the same logic applies to this astrophysicist as it does to anyone else with a complaint.
Folks seem to want to celebrate this case just because they think it matters and makes the US look bad.
I think you're confusing "financial expectations" with "financial resources".
It’s desire that you’re getting stuck on.
The amount of Cubans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans Panamanians, etc… who had literally nothing and no resources to their name, who walked or hitched to the United States or Canada to back breaking labor to put their kids into high school is staggering.
Similarly for pretty much every cab driver and worker in Dubai, who is from Bangladesh or India or Kuala Lumpur or whatever…
In fact, I knew a very successful Honduran restaurant owner in Houston, who was deported twice from the U.S. between 1980-2000 finally got his citizenship on the third trip.
That’s how it worked for everyone coming to the United States. You might get a fever and die on a ship sailing from England. Irish and Italian settlers were treated harshly and worked in factories as children. People came from China to California to help build the railroads. This is just a recency bias.
That just turns into a revolving door. People who can’t make it in California moved to Arizona and Texas. Then complained about Arizona and Texas and moved to Florida. Then complained about Florida and are now moving to the next region.
Without ever considering the possibility that things are just less affordable all across the US. There’s multimillion dollar condos even in tier 3 places that aren’t even all that. Like Madison or Pittsburgh. Let alone talking about getting a house in these areas.
We gotta get the government refocused on affordability. That’s really the only way forward. Young people really have to be given a fair shot here.
I find peoples’ recalcitrance to relocate hard to comprehend. They’re always like “ah, but kids, family, work”, while talking about little much other than how they hate where they live, hate their job, can’t stand Sunday lunches with their parents.
I have a kid. I have family. I work. I move continents when I get bored of the one I live on currently.
On which note, hi from Brazil. 9th country in which I have lived.
What is the takeaway from this article? This is just an essay of a family who is deeply privileged enough to have the freedom to relocate to a part of the world that is even more gatekeeping. That is definitely an achievement, but it’s not like this doesn't happen all the time. It would have been nice if this were a more detailed article that talked about wider trends or highlighted the sacrifices she's making and the students she's bringing with her.
I realize this has been happening for a while since the current administration came into power, but for people from other G7 nations, it's kind of nice seeing this happen to the US for once.
CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was greatly impacted by the cancelation of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) project in Texas.
The U.S. has purposely ceded fundamental science before, and will again.
https://students.aip.org/observer/the-life-of-the-lhc-and-th...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
Edit: The notes for the first article above indicate that estimates of the mass of the Higgs boson were greatly reduced after the SSC cancelation, allowing the LHC to accomplish its goals with less than half the total power (design maximum of 14 TeV for the LHC, versus 40 TeV for the SSC).
Notice also that the SSC was cut in 1993, under a Democratic congress with Bill Clinton in the executive.
agreeing, though to widen the perspective, it's been happening since long before the current administration, or that before it, were in power.
As a concrete example, my amazing professor left U Illinois for Austria, for an example, several years before the Trump/Biden/Trump again era.
it seems that the unending political battle drama gets tiresome for scientists. I believe some people realize that immersed in that context isn't how they want to spend their lives.
[dead]
I don't think links to paywalled sites should be considered without a mirror. What's the point of discussing something if not everyone can access it?
SFPL gives out free access to the NY Times, 3 days at a time. Maybe your local library does too.
(San Francisco Public Library)
> Super intelligence is coming in 1-5 years.
> We need the best and brightest if very country to stay in US.
These are not coherent positions at all.
Frankly I think we need the best looking people, not the most talented/ hard working/ intelligent people anymore, because that might be the only thing AI won’t replace for a while (decades).
tldr;
Over decades, like all government institutions, NASA devolves into an ineffective bureaucracy with massive cost overruns and operational ineffectiveness.
The economic pressure of national debt allows Trump and DOGE to kick much of the academic intelligentsia out of NASA;
astrophysicist loses all her influence in NASA, dies her hair pink and moves to Europe.
NYT continues to publish idealogical comfort food for its reader base about it (mostly liberal elite professional class) and claims it is “journalism”. People feel good reading it.
Instead of the hard work of intellectual honesty and self reflection of views, people continue to devolve into polarized reptilian thinking.