Speeches

Transcript
 

L. Rafael Reif, the president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the CFR Board of Directors, leads a conversation on the pressures contributing to brain drain in the United States and their implications for the future of American higher education, innovation, and competitiveness.

Speaker
L. Rafael Reif
President Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Presider
Irina A. Faskianos
Vice President, National Program and Outreach
Council on Foreign Relations

Transcript

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to today’s CFR Higher Education Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach at CFR. Thanks for joining us.

Today’s discussion is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on our website, education.CFR.org/events. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

We’re delighted to have Rafael Reif with us to discuss brain drain in higher education. Dr. Reif is president emeritus and the Ray and Maria Stata professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his tenure at MIT, Dr. Reif led major initiatives addressing climate change, advancing ethical integration of artificial intelligence, and expanding digital learning, including the launch of MITx, the institute’s portfolio of massive open online courses, and the co-founding of edX, with Harvard, to broaden global access to high quality education worldwide. 

He’s written extensively on innovation ecosystems, the importance of diverse talent, and U.S. science and technology policy, advocating for sustained research, investment, and immigration policies that strengthen the nation’s ties to global talent networks and academic collaboration. Dr. Reif currently serves on the boards of the World Economic Forum, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Broad Institute. And he also serves on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. And we appreciate his leadership on our board. 

So, Rafael, thank you very much for being with us today. We did circulate in advance your recent Foreign Affairs article entitled, “America’s Coming Brain Drain,” obviously, the subject of today’s discussion. And would love to hear your thoughts on how brain drain is affecting higher education the United States today, the broader ramifications of that for career development, and what factors you see as driving talent away from academic institutions.

REIF: Well, thank you, Irina. Thank you for the introduction. Thank you for your kind invitation. I am really grateful for this opportunity to talk about the ways the Trump administration’s war on university is going to hurt the United States in its competition with China.

Since first announcing its Made in China 2025 plan in 2015, Beijing has invested in a whole-of-government focus on advancing critical emerging technologies. As a result, it is now giving the U.S. a run for its money. Chinese automaker BYD has now surpassed Tesla in sales of battery electric vehicles. BYD is not just bigger, but also, arguably, more inventive than Tesla, with chargers that can recharge for up to 250 miles of range in five minutes. In March, Beijing sent quantum encrypted images to South Africa using a small, cheap satellite—an enormous advance in quantum communications. And as the energy demands of artificial intelligence make fusion power, which is a potentially massive source of carbon-free electricity, even more desirable, China reportedly has more new fusion projects, fusion patents, and fusion PhDs than any other country.

Much of the U.S. government response to this increasing competition has been protectionist, including export controls on the GPU chips and chip making equipment used for advanced AI. But the success of Chinese AI company DeepSeek has made clear that this approach is ultimately ineffective. Sooner or later, China is going to invent its way around whatever roadblocks Washington imposes. That’s why it’s so important that the United States not let up on its own strength in innovation. Americans are accustomed to U.S. companies delivering astonishing innovations with regularity, including the iPhone, cloud computing, gene therapies that can cure sickle cell disease, and ChatGPT. And there are certain aspects of U.S. history and culture that have encouraged inventiveness and risk taking. 

But the United States did not become the world’s leading scientific and technological superpower because its people are somehow innately smarter and more creative than those in the rest of the world. The U.S. became a leader because it has had—I emphasize, it has had—the world’s best system for science and innovation. Since World War II, the federal government has awarded funds to universities for basic research projects, inspired by curiosity and not profit. These projects train brilliant students, attract scientific talent from around the world, and produce discoveries. Industry, including startups, then develops those discoveries and finds practical applications for them. 

Many of the most significant technologies of our day, including the internet, the artificial neural networks that enable generative AI, quantum computing, DNA amplification, CRISPR genome editing, mRNA vaccines and therapeutics, 3D printing, and checkpoint inhibitors for cancer treatment emerged from pioneering explorations in U.S. university laboratories. As of 2021, the United States still invested far more than any other nation in basic scientific research. The spillover effects for the U.S. economy have been enormous. An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that U.S. government support for non-defense research and development has accounted for at least one-fifth of total productivity growth in the U.S. business sector since World War II. This is a far greater return than that yielded by federal investments in infrastructure or by private R&D.

Because leading research universities are hotbeds of entrepreneurship, the economic impact of even a single university can be stunning. In 2011, a study at Stanford University calculated that since the 1930s, its alumni and faculty had started companies that employed 5.4 million people and generated $2.7 trillion in annual revenues, putting Stanford among the world’s ten largest economies. MIT has had a similar global scale impact. Yet, despite the centrality of university-based research to the United States’ high-tech economy, in recent decades government support has become increasingly lackluster. 

The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act was designed to correct some of this underinvestment, with $200 billion authorized for R&D and workforce and economic development. The budget of the National Science Foundation, which supports nonmedical academic research, was supposed to double by 2027. Instead, Congress never fully appropriated the funds. Now, the Trump administration is allowing scientific discovery and technological innovation to become collateral damage amid a culture war on universities. In just a few months in office, the Trump administration has hollowed out research agency staffs and canceled already awarded grants deemed to be in conflict with its political goals, such as those related to DEI, or climate science, or a disfavored institution, such as Columbia and Harvard.

Though it has been temporarily stopped by the courts, the Trump administration has tried to cap reimbursement for the indirect cost of research. These include the cost of maintaining and operating buildings and providing information infrastructure for laboratories. The administration’s 15 percent figure does not reflect the real cost shouldered by leading universities. Moreover, President Trump’s budget proposal would starve U.S. science, cutting the budget of NIH (National Institutes of Health) by about 40 percent and NSF (National Science Foundation) by 57 percent. We will have to see what happens during the appropriation process. And his One Big Beautiful Bill is going to hobble some of the country’s best private universities as they try to make up for the loss of federal support with their own funds. The bill increased the tax on endowment income as much as sixfold. At MIT, the annual tax bill will be equivalent to our entire undergraduate financial aid budget. 

The Trump administration is not just costing universities dollars, but also brilliant people. The United States has long benefited from an enormous brain gain, with the most talented people from around the world coming here, because here is where the best science has been done. But with the funding cuts, academic censorship, and hostile immigration policies, the Trump administration is now provoking a brain drain. Three-quarters of the respondents to a Nature poll of U.S. researchers said that they were considering leaving the United States because of the Trump administration disruptions to science. European universities are now gladly recruiting U.S. scientific talent. Researchers of Chinese origin in fields essential to U.S. competitiveness, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and nuclear fusion, are leaving U.S. research universities to return to China. 

Freezes and cuts in research funding have also had an immediate impact on the next generation of talent, as universities limit the number of graduate students they admit and postdoctoral researchers they hire, and even rescind offers they already made. Some of these young people may be driven out of science entirely. The United States is also turning itself into a much less desirable destination for the world’s best students by detaining international graduate students and threatening them with deportation, by revoking student visas and in some cases without explanation, and by vetting those applying for visas more strictly. This will weaken American leadership in emerging technologies. 

International students earn more than half of all U.S. doctorates in computer science, engineering, and mathematics. These students make enormous contributions in research. While the U.S.—while the U.S., certainly needs to do a better job of preparing and recruiting its homegrown talent to these fields, it is important to recognize how much we gain by attracting brilliant people from around the world. And the overwhelming majority of international doctoral students educated in the U.S. intend to stay on in the United States after earning their degrees, including more than three out of four doctoral recipients from China. 

These students contribute tremendously to the U.S. economy. Twenty-five percent of U.S. billion-dollar startup companies have a founder who first came to the country as an international student. But increasingly, the best students around the world have other options. Ultimately, if the United States no longer conducts the productive research enabled by government investment, it will lose the technological race with China. It will generate fewer high-tech entrepreneurs. And its military will suffer, because the military relies on technologically advanced commercial products that the defense market alone cannot support. 

U.S. universities are not perfect. But many of them are extremely successful institutions by global standards. And the country depends on them. To defund universities because of faults that have nothing to do with research is to recklessly shut off the spigot to innovation. China, in contrast, this year announced a 10 percent increase to its central government science and technology spending, and an increased focus on basic research. China is not only increasing the scale of its inputs to innovation, but also their quality. In the 2016 Nature index, which tracks scientific output, five of the world’s top ten academic institutions generating high-quality research were American, and just one was Chinese. That was 2016. In this year’s index, nine of the world’s top ten were Chinese, and just one was American—Harvard University, which the Trump administration seems intent on destroying. 

Just as the center of gravity in science and technology moved away from Europe to the United States during the twentieth century, it can also move to Asia in the twenty-first. The United States, once solidly on the front lines of technology, is now on its way to becoming a much weaker player. And so far, we are responding by trying to weaken ourselves further. There has never been anything inevitable about U.S. leadership in science and technology. What is inevitable is that if the U.S. does not work to maintain its lead on the battlefield, others will take its place. 

And with that, Irina, I think I’m open to take any easy questions. The hard ones come later. 

FASKIANOS: Thank you so much, Rafael, for that overview. So we’re going to go to all of you for your questions. 

(Gives queuing instructions.)

So I’m going to go first to Jim Gates. And please accept the unmute prompt.

Q: Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you, Rafael, for stepping into this important role. 

My question is the following. You just said—

FASKIANOS: And can you identify yourself, Jim? Sorry.

Q: I thought I said my name is Jim Gates.

FASKIANOS: Your affiliation.

Q: University of Maryland. 

FASKIANOS: Thank you. 

Q: Thank you. Thank you, Rafael, for that presentation. 

As you know, I’m a teacher. I’ve been teaching forever, fifty-three consecutive years. And students come to me these days and ask a very central question, which I’d like to get your opinion about. When—you said it’s not inevitable, this loss. But when do you think it becomes inevitable? That’s a question I keep getting.

REIF: Well, I’ll tell you this much. Right now, the federal government seems to be intent on destroying the research infrastructure of the nation by cutting the funding for university research. That, right now, is not irreversible. I’m hoping that people will understand, the policymakers will understand, that if they have any problems with how universities handle the culture war of conservatives versus liberals and things of that nature, that really has very little to do, if anything, with advancing research, advancing the economy of the country. So I would like to think that even today still things could be reversible. 

But if the president gets his way and cuts NIH funding by 40 percent, and NSF by almost 60 percent, and we do that for a couple more years, that becomes irreversible. Once we stop—we start closing down the research infrastructure of our nation, once universities have to start closing down and closing laboratories and equipment, laying off people and researchers, who have tremendous experience on what we’re doing—once that happens, and it’s beginning to happen. If it happens for another two years, then that’s really irreversible. The U.S. will be in a very steady decline from there. Jim, that’s my humble opinion.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. All right, I will take the next question from Mia Bloom.

Q: Thank you so much. And thank you, Dr. Reif, for your presentation.

I have a question with regard to—

FASKIANOS: Mia, can you give your affiliation? 

Q: Oh, I’m so sorry. Gosh.

FASKIANOS: That’s OK. Just to share with the group. 

Q: I’m so embarrassed. I’m so sorry. So I’m Mia Bloom. I’m a professor at Georgia State University. And I was previously at Penn State.

So the question I have, and maybe it’s a difficult one, you want to put me at the end. But I wonder in part what is the responsibility of universities to fill in the gaps, at least temporarily? All of my grants, it’s been anywhere from 55 to 58 percent were taken in indirects. And it was a black box. And so part of it is, at least at Penn State University, now that the NSF indirects have been cut to 15 percent, they’re actually refusing to apply for grants even when faculty wants to. And part of me wonders, you know, isn’t it the responsibility of the university to reinvest the years of 55-plus-plus percent that they’ve taken, and—in other words, it seems, from the perspective of a PI (principal investigator), millions of dollars of my grants have been taken. I don’t know where it went. And if the grants get canceled, why can’t they reinvest in it, the way you would if you were a private corporation? And thank you, again, for the opportunity to ask the question.

REIF: Mia, thank you for your question. Let me just address two things. First, the indirect cost part. The truth of the matter are that indirect costs are real costs. The university had to pay them. Indirect costs include, say, the maintaining the building of your lab or your offices, the air conditioning, you know, whatever that is by maintenance and the support of the of the facility we have is covered by the university. So, yes, if we are not going to fund more research contracts then we have a problem how to maintain that space in the future, because the research contract was paying for that space. But the money has been spent already, because it’s been spent to maintain the space in which we have the laboratories in which you do the research. So that’s the part that is not understood, even by people in university, and least of them all by people in the government. So indirect costs are real costs, are not imaginary costs, are not black box. Everything that universities have to spend in order to do research is an indirect cost. So there’s no way to get them back. 

On the other hand, you raise another point that I think is important. What’s the responsibility of the university moving forward? I believe we have a real serious problem right now. We have a real serious emergency. We should not allow—we should do everything possible for the infrastructure of research in our country not to be destroyed. So that means that the university has to play a role in trying to support some of it, there is no way that they can replace federal funding, but support some of it. And I think they should probably work together with supporters of the university, with the private sector, to figure out how to come up together with some logic of matching funds or some way—to come up with some emergency funding so that for another one, or two, or three years we can maintain the infrastructure we have today. Otherwise, as Professor Gates said in his question, we will come to a point in which it will be irreversible. We won’t be able to go back. And we have to just push that into the future, hoping for a better situation. 

So I think there is some responsibility that universities have, working with their supporters in the private sector, to maintain as much of the research ecosystem we have in place in order for that not to be closed down. But at the same time, we have to think of our long-term strategy. What do we do after this emergency fund—or, this emergency period is done? We have to come up with ways to maintain, to be somewhat less dependent on federal funding, but come up with a model, a financial model, that the federal government may be able to accept. And this government is very willing to come up with all sorts of deals and negotiations. So we want to—we need some time to get to the point in which we know what we want from the government and we can negotiate with them how to maintain federal funding. But that’s not going to happen overnight. It’s not going to happen under this climate. So we need some emergency funds to move forward for another one, two, or three years, while we come up with a long-term plan. Thank you for the question, Mia.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Let’s go to Kenneth Oye from MIT.

Q: There. Hi, Rafael. Is this audible? 

FASKIANOS: Yes.

REIF: Perfectly. Except that don’t think I should allow MIT people to ask any questions. 

FASKIANOS: (Laughs.)

Q: OK, well let’s go. I’m going to ask the hardest question I can, Rafael.

The easy part is that the article that you wrote in Foreign Affairs was great, and the points that you were making were things that are, I think, very broadly shared. It was framed in terms of competition, particularly with China. And, of course, there’s significant areas of competition. And the policies of the current administration have weakened us significantly, with reference to R&D, through indirect costs. And you mentioned driving people away, the brain drain. And I have to say, when I go onto campus and talk with graduate students from Germany, from Canada, from China, and India, I keep hearing again and again and again: I want to go home. I hear again and again and again: If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t come to MIT. I wouldn’t come to the United States. And those are very real points. 

The question on that is, what do we do about it? Understanding that we do have an administration in power. Efforts to communicate have failed. In fact, there seems to be a communications problem comparable to the movie Cool Hand Luke, with that deputy sheriff. But it’s very bad right now. So the first question is, what is to be done with reference to policies that are having the effect of weakening the U.S. with respect to U.S.-China competition? But the harder question, Rafael, is that we have mutual interests with China, not just conflicting interests. You take climate change. You even take cybersecurity, or health research, or pandemic surveillance. In so many areas there are things that we need to be working with China on. And we are getting weakened in terms of our strengths and, frankly, the framing of U.S.-China relations right now does not even permit the discussion of mutual interests to any significant degree. So what do we do about that as well?

REIF: Kenneth, let me address the second part of your question because I think that’s really at the heart of almost everything we’re facing right now. I mean, what you said about people leaving and what to do, we have a culture war with the government. We have to figure out a way to negotiate that war. And I can say a little more about that. But let me address the point you made about China and that we really have to figure out a way to work together. 

I think maybe things will change in the next few months. I hear that the president wants to visit China, and maybe things will warm up a little bit. But it hasn’t for years. I really think the desire for conversation on both sides—my experience, and I’ve been involved in that for a while, Kenneth, as you have—is that there is not much desire to talk to each other. Maybe things will change if the president goes to China and there are conversations that are unexpected. But there has not been much desire to speak, for a variety of reasons. I mean, you know, there is—the perception from China is that, yes, we have a world order created by the U.S., but that happened eighty years ago. By then, at the time, China was not really a presence. But now it is. And let’s rewrite the world order with China at the table, because now they are a big power. 

And the U.S. is saying, well, that’s not exactly right. We have to maintain the order we have. So there is that kind of issue that is in the geographical part of the South China Seas and all that. There are very complex factors that prevent us to have a conversation. And, of course, there is always Taiwan in between of all that. I believe strongly—and I’ve been pushing for that, not with much success, although some of that is going on—but I think we should have academics from the U.S. and academics from China, at the very least to start with, it should be a little broader than that, to understand that we are going through severe changes on technology advances. That there is AI, there is CRISPR, there is a lot of advanced technologies that could impact society and could impact our countries in a very bad way, particularly if they fall in the wrong hands of nonstate actors.

We should figure out how to work together, academics, to figure out what’s the best way to use the technology and what are the guardrails, and have a conversation about that from the point of view of the academic standpoint. I think once we start, hopefully, finding a constructive way to have a dialogue, starting with academics, we have a chance to start beginning to trust each other to go into more—the more difficulty issues. In other words, how to address the Taiwan issue, how to address the South China Seas, how to address a bunch of the issues of the world order and so forth. Those are very, very complex topics to start with. But how to protect the world from the technologies we are developing in China and the U.S. should be something we both can agree on.

And if we can understand that that is something we both agree on, we don’t want things to go out of whack—and climate change probably won’t agree for a while, because our government is a different position, but eventually we will agree. My point is, on areas in which we know we have to address together, let’s address them together. And instead of doing it government to government, let’s do it academic to academic to start with. It’s kind of a modern version of ping-pong diplomacy that Richard Nixon did many years ago. So that’s what I think we should do vis-a-vis China, not to treat them as so—definitely not as enemies. They are just competitors. But to find ways in which we can compete. Look, MIT competes with Harvard, but we collaborate with Harvard, too. So I think there are ways in which in common interest together we can do something together. 

On the other point you mentioned about leaving the country and what can—what can we can do about that. I think, again, on that issue, there are—as I said earlier, there are two areas of tension with the government. One is that they want to punish universities because you are not liberal enough. You’re too conservative. And the punishment comes from the point—from the from the funding source point of view. Let’s try to isolate how punishing with funding is a bad news for America. And let’s just figure out how to separate that and figure out a way to continue to get funding in some negotiating schemes. But we have to recognize that, in the culture wars, even though I strongly disagree with the government in that—in their position, the truth is that some of what they say is true. 

And we have to recognize that we have had misbehavior on academic circles. For example, I can say blatantly, I mean, canceling a speaker because he doesn’t—he’s too conservative is not the right thing to do. Asking future faculty people who apply for a faculty position to write a DEI statement to show their commitment, that’s not the right thing to do. So we have gone through some extremes. And we just have to recognize that, and yield there. So I think there are ways in which we can have a conversation with the government to try to calm down the culture war. And I would like to start with addressing what I think is the simplest of them all, which is the funding of research. Because that actually hurts the United States as well.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to take a written question from Fodei Batty, who’s at Quinnipiac University: Should there be any sympathy for the inverse scenario, for countries who lose their best and brightest to the United States and Europe? Would the world be a better place if the MAGA vision of an anti-immigrant world is achieved and people stayed in the respective countries to contribute to those countries, instead of the United States?

REIF: Well, that’s an excellent question. But let me tell you my views. I think that—I would like to think of a world—let me just put it in simple terms. I was not born in the United States. So I came from another country. I can tell you that I can speak for just about everybody who did that, that it’s not easy to leave your home country. That’s not something you want to do. It’s much more comfortable to stay where you grew up, to stay with your friends. That’s the easy way. That’s the way you all wish to have. If you leave the country, it’s because something is not going well with you and the country, or with the country for you. So you leave to do something exciting in the United States. That is part of what attracts you. But at the same time, there are things in your home country that you just cannot live with. And that’s why you leave. 

So your point is a very good one. What I would like to say is that I would like all the nations of the world to treat their academics well, to treat their education well, to do the right job for the people who have talent, so that they want to stay and build their country. If they scare them away, of course, they go to another country. So your point is a good one. But it’s not so much the U.S. is forcing people to come here. We just used to be attractive to people to come here. Used to be attractive people like me. But people normally also leave the country of birth not because the other one is more attractive. It’s normally because they are not comfortable with the country of birth as well.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to take the next question from Margaret Lewis.

Q: Hi. This is Maggie Lewis. I’m a law professor at Seton Hall.

But I’m actually right now in Palo Alto for Asian American Scholar Forum’s annual meeting along with Gang Chen. And I first want to thank you for your leadership when he was prosecuted under the China initiative, which—we’ll see what happens this week—but Congress could soon be directing DOJ to reestablish it. 

My question though is about research security more generally. And part of the CHIPS Act was money to NSF for the SECURE Initiative, which is now underway at University of Washington, as well as nodes at Hoover and other places. And the research security issues are real. I’m a China scholar at heart. Who do you think universities, government agencies—who’s doing something right on research security, that isn’t driven by bias and scaring away people but rather trying to do more evidence-based, thoughtful protection of intellectual property, as well as more on the writing of grants and making sure that that stays in the peer review stage, as it should be confidential? Thank you. 

REIF: Thank you, Margaret, for the question. I’m going to be a little parochial to answer that because I think a place that is doing a great job of that is MIT. We have basically a whole study made on this. And we have a whole analysis and guide principles for our faculty here, what is that they should do, what is that they shouldn’t do, in order to do the right thing for the country, to do the right thing for international collaboration, including with China, and the things that we should shy away from. It’s on the web. You can find it. I strongly recommend you read it. It’s has been—it has been influential in some other places. I don’t know how broad—how broad it is. But it started, like, maybe four years ago or so and, you know, was posted maybe a couple of years ago. Maybe somebody in the audience involved in that would have a better answer. But I strongly recommend it. It is very thoughtful, very well done. And that’s what has been guiding us for years. Thank you, Margaret, for the question.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

Going next to—let’s see—Jeremi Suri.

Q: Hi. Jeremi Suri from the University of Texas at Austin.

My question is a simple but complex one. What role should industry play right now? Should we be working with industry to make the arguments you’re making? How can we leverage industry? And, as a historian and international relations specialist, how do you see that in particular for the humanities and social sciences?

REIF: Excellent question. Jeremi, look, I think—I said earlier that we are in an emergency moment right now. Unless we act quickly, we collectively, the research infrastructure of the nation could be affected pretty badly. Even if Congress does not go along with the cuts that the president wants, any cuts are going to hurt. Any cuts, when you add that to endowment tax in the indirect cost cap, I mean, all this is really going to hurt universities badly. So in this emergency moment, this is not a time in which—we don’t have time to negotiate and discuss with the government thoroughly and Congress. I mean, this is very complex. 

I think we need to come up with an emergency fund to protect what we’re doing. Anything that the government decided to cut, we just have to figure out how to replenish as much of it as possible. Where would the funds come from? Partly, if the university has some, they should put them in. But in addition to that, we should work with state governments. And we should work with all the private entities that benefit from research and universities. That’s industry, by and large. That’s also foundations. That’s also venture capital, risk capital. We should figure out how to work together to produce the funds, the emergency funds, needed for the next one, two, or three years, until we find a more—more of a long-term contract. 

I think that’s critical. You know, I think—I think that will allow us to figure out what to do in the long term, which I think has to be a complete renegotiation of the financial model of funding universities. And I think, Jeremi, I’m addressing—I just realized, I’m addressing one part of your question, which I wrote down, but not the other part. What’s the part that I’m missing?

Q: So, in particular, for the social sciences and humanities, because we rely disproportionately on government funding.

REIF: Absolutely. Well, that’s critical. I think that’s actually a critical point. I mentioned earlier how I think we should work together with China academics to figure out about the technologies we are creating, how to produce guardrails so that we don’t affect our own countries and our own societies. There is a lot going on on technology. I mentioned AI. I mentioned CRISPR, gene editing technologies. There is a lot that we’re doing that requires guardrails. It requires guardrails on how we are affecting, impacting—how it could affect a society. You know Twitter, the former Twitter, that approach to social media has really hurt society quite a bit. It was not predicted because people didn’t think about it. You run with a with a great idea that you have enabled by technology. 

I think the point of view of social scientists, whether it’s political science, economists, a humanists, the point of view of how they see the world, with all these new technologies coming so quickly into our society, we have to find brain power to figure out how to give us a sense of managing all those advancing technologies. So I think that part of the whole—the whole research environment ought to be supported as well.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to go next to Bob Scott, who’s the president emeritus and university—professor emeritus at Adelphi University: What is the role of boards of trustees in governing through these difficult times? 

REIF: Well, they will—they play a role, of course. I would like—I would like to think that the board of trustees, in these difficult times, they do two things. They act, one, as a cheerleader to support the university. Right now, academics—university administration is being attacked from all sides for what’s going on right now. And I think they need the board to support them, and to advise them. I think when I mentioned that we need ways to—a way to find emergency funds, the boards can help to figure out where in the private sector can participate. The boards also—very often, the boards of institutions, they have friends in the in Congress. They have friends, supporters, representative in the House. People they can talk to, to explain to them the role of universities. 

I mean, look at the point that one of our colleagues just mentioned earlier, how can she get the overhead cap—the overhead money back? I mean, there is a major misunderstanding. Those are real costs. If our own faculty does not know that, the Congress doesn’t know that either. We need everybody instructed, educated, and explaining what universities do with the money they have, and all the good they do. So I think that part, to me, is a critical aspect that only boards can do—support the university, advise the administration. There is always all sort of different backgrounds on boards from different segments of society and sectors of industry. They can provide all sort of advice, but also they can assist the university administration to come up with how to implement the right models for them to move forward.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to take the next question from Travis Thul, raised hand.

Q: Hi, everybody. Can you hear me? 

REIF: Yes.

FASKIANOS: We can, and your affiliation.

Q: Hi. My name’s Travis. I’m from Minnesota State University. 

I’m just wondering what you’ve seen on philanthropic organizations or state governments stepping in to cover the gap. Surely we know Michael Bloomberg recently gave a billion dollars to Johns Hopkins. And, I guess, recently is probably eight or nine years ago now. But there definitely seems to be some capacity in the pipe there to help us get through this phase.

REIF: Thank you for the question, Travis. I think there is—there is some movement in that direction, but the facts are that they have not been asked. So we don’t have—I think what I would love to see is that, state by state, the state government says—or, at least the states which are affected by lack of research funding and by how it could affect their own state economy—that the state governments can say, look, this is going to hurt me. I mean, yes, the government—the federal government, doesn’t want to pay for this, but it’s going to hurt my state. It’s going to hurt my jobs. Going to hurt my economy. So I got to do something about it. 

I can put X amount of dollars, but I’m going to ask the university to put some money, and then together we can go and work with philanthropists, university sponsors, and philanthropist foundations, and so forth, to do something together. It is impossible to have a nationwide effort that puts them all together. I mean, where is the leadership for that? That’s a very big deal. But I think state by state it could be done. I have not seen it done. I’m suggesting it’s done, but it hasn’t happened yet that I know of. But I would say that would be, Travis, a way to go. And perhaps if you know somebody in the state government, you can go and talk to them about it. But somebody has to lead this effort and bring the university, the state government, and the private sector of the state to just to find that emergency funding.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

Going next to Geri Sawicki, who has a written question. Adjunct professor of sociology at Modesto Junior College: How do I encourage undergraduate students to go into the STEM fields when the future looks so uncertain for jobs? We already have a shortage of scientists and engineers, and we will need to grow our own.

REIF: Well, I think the best way to incentivize an undergraduate, or even a high school student, to go into STEM is to tell them that the country needs graduates in STEM. That we have relied heavily on international students for years because we don’t have enough domestic students interested. And if they choose that as a space to become professionals, jobs will become, hopefully, much more available than they even are today, because we need them. So I think—the bottom line is if—I would like to encourage—personally, I would like to encourage students to follow their own interest, to follow what really they like doing. 

I think if somebody does and follows what he or she loves doing, eventually he or she will be successful at that. So I would not encourage somebody to go into STEM because there will be jobs in STEM. But if somebody wants to do STEM, is interested in STEM, is just afraid of doing that because the future is uncertain, I think we can tell them the future is much less uncertain in STEM than in any other field. Please proceed. But I would not try to twist arms to get undergraduates to move into STEM.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’ll take the next question from John Mathiason.

Q: Thank you. John Mathiason. I’m from the Brooks School of Public Policy of Cornell University.

But, to put it into context, I have my doctorate from MIT in political science. Now, to put my question in context, I’m going to read from the back of my MIT T-shirt, because the political science department of MIT only was created after World War II. Here’s what it says on my T-shirt: When asked why man has discovered the structure of the atom, yet not the political means to keep it from destroying us, Albert Einstein replied, “that is simple, my friend. That is because politics is more difficult than physics.” 

Now, the question is a lot of what’s happening with research is in fact connected with what I would call policy issues at the larger scale. And very often that isn’t the factor that’s been read into why we need that kind of research. There are a large number of policy issues being debated even today—climate change, pandemics, nuclear weapons, AI, migration, all of these. To what extent do you—in order to be able to get support for the research, not only from governments but from the public—do you have to connect the research carefully with the policy issues that the research can help solve?

REIF: Excellent question, John. And I’m delighted that a proud graduate of our poli sci department asked me that tough question. John, let me tell you what I—how I view that. I think it’s important that the research we do with federal funds, which is really taxpayers’ money, is somewhat connected—somewhat connected to the taxpayer. However, this is the way I really—in a broader sphere, I view research. People tell me often, why do we want to support research in academia? Because, you know, after all, industry has more money and they can do whatever research they want. And who needs academia? They can do it. 

And the simplest answer to that question is that industry will always do research and development that benefits that industry. They have a roadmap of products they want to achieve to stay competitive. And they do research so that in five years or ten years the product they have in mind can become available and implementable. That’s not the role of university research. We just advance knowledge. And by advancing knowledge, we create not just new road maps, but new roads, new avenues, new ways of thinking, new industries. So I think the idea of—the basic idea of doing research is just to advance knowledge. It’s just—it’s the purest of ideas, advance knowledge in any domain. And I would like to think that, ideally, I would like funds to be available from people, experts in any discipline, to advance knowledge in their discipline, because that is the main purpose. 

Then, of course, there are people who are trying to solve a problem. But those who try to solve a problem, they need knowledge to solve it. And they go to the wealth of knowledge created by academics. So that’s kind of, I simplify the way I see the world. So it’s very hard to say, OK, let’s not do research on this topic, because I see no way that the taxpayers see any connection. Well, not today. But in the future, there will be. So we have to have individuals with vision that tell the taxpayer, look, this is something good we are doing for society. All of these discoveries that got all these Nobel Prizes from even our economics department at MIT, John, that you know very well, all these Nobel Prizes eventually produce a lot of positive consequences and products in society. It just takes a while for new knowledge to be used. But new knowledge is at the heart of everything we’re going to be using in the future.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to take a written question from Norbert Holtkamp, a science fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution: Why do you think we ended up in a situation in which a significant fraction of the country does not believe and doesn’t support anymore the traditional role of the universities? Is a simple answer to go back to where we were, or do we need to look and define a new equilibrium?

REIF: Well, that’s a—that has a long answer. But let me just see if I can—I can highlight some key points here. Why are we where we are? By and large, if you look at polls—and I have seen some of them—of the American public, when it comes to the attacks on research universities, they don’t like it. So they are not happy with it. I don’t know whether the U.S. government is paying attention to that, but they don’t like it. So those attacks don’t seem to be going well. 

However, it is true that when the government or politicians decided to attack universities, particularly the cultural war of conservative versus liberals, the fact is that—the fact is that conservative thinkers have always been attacking universities because they view them as too liberal. I mean, there are so many people writing about that, so many conferences on that topic. We, in universities, basically educate liberal thinkers that then go to society and perpetuate the liberal point of view. We are not educating people with conservative thoughts. So that’s kind of the gestalt of thought in general. So that has been around for a while. 

I think—and it has been gradually improving. I think it exploded more recently with the actions of universities, with cancel culture, with canceling speakers, with all those things that we have been doing in the last, you know, five, six, seven years, have hurt us, have hurt our position with the general public. And then when politicians choose to identify that and choose to attack us, they found fertile ground. I think that’s at a very high level the way I see things. 

I mean, how to how to get us back on track? That is a very important question. Universities have to decide what to do. I think, to start with, we have to recognize why we are where we are. We have to recognize there is a cultural war. We have to recognize that we have not been—we talk a lot about freedom of expression. You can say everything you want, except when you say things that we find offensive we don’t want you to say them. We’re doing things which are not very consistent. And that has provided a window for people to attack us and to score. I think we just have to view what we have done in the last ten years or so, where we’ve from, and try to figure out how—not just to—not just to, you know, recenter what we are here for, but also tell the general public that we’re doing that. Because if we make some changes and we don’t tell anybody, the perception that we’re completely out of whack is going to still stay there.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to go next to David Brown, who has a raised hand. You’re unmuted, David, so you can go ahead.

Q: Many people are involved with clinical research, which requires trials with volunteers, some of which are receiving medications which are being evaluated by clinical research. By eliminating those trials, their health is being severely jeopardized, let alone the question of the potential use of those medications. 

FASKIANOS: David, did you have a question or you’re just giving a comment?

Q: Well, I would like a response to that. What happens to these people? What would you advise?

REIF: Well, I think that’s a really serious problem, of course. I think the best advice I can offer right here, without knowing much details, is that these people should reach their congressperson. They should reach their representative in the government, and should tell them: This is what you’re doing to me. Is this what you want to happen to your father or your mother or your sister? They have to raise their voices. And I strongly suggest they do so. In fact, that is true with just about everything we talked about today. 

By and large, I think, with exceptions, the universities have been very, very quiet. With all these attacks and all these extremely unfair things going on, as David just pointed out. We have been much too quiet. And I understand why we’re being quiet, because we’re afraid to get kicked—you know, kicked around, the way the administration is doing to Harvard, and Columbia, and so forth. But the result of it is that the general public, they just hear that we are bad news. We are just too antisemitic, or whatever it is that we’re accused of being. But they don’t hear—they don’t hear all the horrible things they’re doing to our own people through, like, examples like David said. They should speak up some more.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to take the next written question from Wayne Schroeder, who’s at Marymount University: Twice you mentioned the impact of the science and technology cuts on the military. The Defense Department is also reducing its S&T (science and technology) budgets. Industry has independent R&D, but it always searches for something that can ultimately be produced and manufactured. Where do you see the military R&D balance between China and the U.S. ten years from now?

REIF: Where do I see the—

FASKIANOS: The balance—

REIF: Oh, oh. Well, I mean, I think, look, if you look at the trends, the trends are very clear. I mean, China is investing more and more every year. And we are investing less and less every year. I’m not so sure that we are cutting down on defense research as much as we’re cutting down on non-R&D defense research. In the non-defense, we’re cutting significant—at least, the government wants to cut significantly. On the defense side, we’re cutting, but I don’t think we’re cutting that much. But regardless, we are not increasing significantly. On the China side, that is really moving quite aggressively. I’m very concerned about the consequences of that, of course. But that’s what I’m trying to raise and pay attention—and raise attention to, all these issues.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

Bob Scott, I think we asked a question earlier but you still have your hand raised. If you can unmute yourself.

Q: Thank you. My question was answered. 

FASKIANOS: OK, great. All right.

And I think we have maybe time for one more. Joe Whitehead from Bowling Green State University: This discussion is focused on attracting talent from other countries and investment in U.S. research infrastructure. Can you comment on higher education influencing the preparation of individuals in the U.S. for advanced education, invest in U.S. human infrastructure for the long term?

REIF: Absolutely. That’s a very important topic. I think one issue that I have seen in the years that I’ve been involved in education, in looking at admissions materials, for instance, of students, I think what we need to do more of is in strengthen the K-12 system in America. We need to strengthen them. I mean, I think if we don’t prepare them—and I think I use a sentence along those lines in my remarks. We have to prepare them—not just to incentivize them, but prepare them—to be able to handle STEM kind of education. We are underutilizing K-12 on two areas that are critical to America. 

One is, as I said, on STEM. But the other part is on civic education. What does it mean to live in a democracy? What does it mean to vote in elections? What does it all mean? Because right now, democracy is also being attacked severely. And quite many people don’t really understand, or don’t really see what’s going on. I think when you get to college you can do something about it, but in college we expect that you know enough so you can take it to a higher level. But if you don’t come with enough, it’s very hard to build it from there. I really think we have to pay attention, as a nationwide effort, to strengthen our K-12 system. It really needs it.

FASKIANOS: Thank you.

I’m going to sneak in one more question from John Torpey, whose hand—and sorry that we can’t get to all of them. So, John, you’re the last question. 

Q: Hi. Thanks. I’m John Torpey from the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center. 

And my question—you know, I understand that you agree or accept that the administration has concerns about what’s been going on at universities, the cancel culture, kinds of culture war issues. But, you know, rulers don’t typically cut off the branch that they’re sitting on. And so how do you deal with the fact that they seem to be willing—(laughs)—to, you know, undermine, in a way, our own position in order to root out these, you know, nefarious aspects, as they see it, of the contemporary university? I mean, it seems like you’re dealing with somebody who’s, shall we say, not entirely rational. I mean, how does one do that?

REIF: Yeah. Well, I mean, truly, it does not appear to be rational. John, on that—on that we agree. However, not everybody—I mean, I have—look, I when I was MIT president, I worked with President Obama when he was in office. I worked with President Trump when he was in office the first time. And then I worked with President Biden. They all have different points of view about different things. And I can elaborate a lot on that. They don’t agree in a lot and they have different priorities on a lot of things. But the bottom line is that these are individuals that have one sense of priorities, but the administration is a much bigger machine. There are all sorts of people with all sorts of views. And they all—I mean, we may not like some positions, we don’t like, you know, what they say or do. But in my experience, everybody that I have met that works in Washington works very, very hard, works twenty-four seven, nonstop. They all are very committed to the country, in their own views, in their own way. 

The point that I’m trying to make is that it is possible to find common ground on some issues with some of them. And I think it’s important that we identify common ground. So an example is, OK, government, you are trying to destroy universities because we don’t behave the way you like us. But realize that by killing research you’re destroying the country too. Can we agree on that? I mean, I think there are—you can find conversations in which people agree and have some common ground—not everybody, but quite a few of them in one area or the other. And then you take it from there. That’s all we can do right now. But at least we can try. And I think in the past, that has helped universities. Things could have been much worse in the last number of years if it weren’t for these kinds of conversations. 

Has that happened this time around? I don’t think so. But because things have been so aggressive, and so abrupt, and so quick. But I think we just have to figure out how to find common ground on some topics. And that’s what I said earlier. I would like to separate research funding and find common ground there from the cultural war, conservative versus liberal, and find common ground there. And we can take it from there and make some progress. And remember, governments only last four years, sometimes only two. And let’s see what happens in the elections next year. So I think we have to do what we can. We have to work with what we have in place right now. We cannot wish it away. It is what it is. Appears very irrational, but it is what it is. Let’s work with it. Let’s try to find common ground and take it from there. And hopefully things will work out at the end.

FASKIANOS: With that, thank you, Rafael Reif, for being with us, and for this hour of conversation, and for your Foreign Affairs piece. And to all of you for your questions and comments. I’m sorry we could not get to them all. We will just have to continue talking and have you back.

So we will be posting the audio and video and transcript of this discussion if you want to share with your colleagues, your state and local officials, and other corporations to sort of pull together a group of—come together. And with that, I will bring this to a close. Again, I encourage you to visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and our education.CFR.org portal, as well as ThinkGlobalHealth.org, for research and analysis on global issues. So, again, thank you all for being with us. And thank you, Rafael.

REIF: Thank you, Irina. Thank you, all.