Is Trump the problem of the academic community? A sociologist’s perspective on research in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential victory
Jasanoff is a sociologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trump’s victory illustrates a fundamental disconnect between academic researchers and many Republican voters. The scientists who have yet to fully grapple with this social and political divide will need humility in order to find common ground. For many Republicans, “the problem is us” — the academic ‘elites’, Jasanoff says.
“Starting now, we are going to need brave people, people willing to push back, protect the vulnerable, and do what’s right over what’s easy,” says one senior official with the US Environmental Protection Agency, who declined to be named because they were afraid of retribution under a new Trump administration. “We do have to remember what’s right. Public health and environment are two things that should be protected.
Worries pouring in this morning align with those expressed by the majority of readers who responded last month to a survey conducted by Nature. Over 80 percent of the more than 2,000 people who responded to the survey were in favor of Harris because of concerns relating to climate change, public health and the state of US democracy. Some said they would change their homes or study if Trump was elected.
A bioinformatics perspective on Trump’s presidency: Comment on a virologist’s post by Fraser Stoddart
Responses geared towards that sentiment have come swiftly. With the changing in the world, you may like to consider relocating to one of the best universities in the world, according to a post by a prominent virologist.
Not everybody is against a Trump presidency. Of those who responded to Nature’s reader survey, 6% expressed a preference for Trump — usually citing concerns about security issues and the economy. The chief scientific officer at Seele Neuroscience, based in Mexico City, favored Trump, telling Nature that he is the lesser of the evils. The Mexican economy is strongly dependent on decisions made by the US government, Monroy-Fonseca says.
Another reader who agreed to be contacted but did not want their name to be used, worried about Trump’s hostility towards science and evidence. The nurse who voted for Trump was from North Carolina and said she wanted to be safe and take care of her family.
“In my long life of 82 years … there has hardly been a day when I felt more sad,” says Fraser Stoddart, a Nobel laureate who left the United States last year and is now chair of chemistry at the University of Hong Kong. I’ve witnessed something that I think is bad for us all around the world.
What Will Donald Trump Do if he is elected to the White House? The Case of the Greatest Political Movement of All Time in the U.S.
Although votes are being counted in many places, Trump has already won enough states to defeat his opponent. Trump addressed his supporters as the victor early today, declaring his coalition “the greatest political movement of all time”.
Republicans could win the Senate, flipping at least three seats, although there are four more competitive races that have yet to be called for either party. It could be days or weeks before the final results are in for the lower chamber, the US House of Representatives, but it seems likely that Republicans will retain control. This will give Trump and his party complete control of Washington DC.
Jasienska says they need to be ready for a new world. “I am trying to be optimistic, but it is hard to find any positive aspects for global science and public health if Republicans take over.”
Trump has called climate change a hoax and withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement, but has promised to give Robert Kennedy Jr., a political figure who has denied the efficacy of vaccines, a big role in his administration.
The president-elect will have advantages when he returns to the White House in January. Many government watchers say that he didn’t have a plan when he took office, but it was a surprise after he won. The Trump administration that takes over next year will be better prepared and likely to face less scrutiny than the previous administration due to his control over the Republican establishment, according to Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University.
That does not mean he will be able to do what he wants. “There’s a kind of revolutionary sweep to a lot of Trump’s promises that may collide with the messy reality of implementation.”
Trump promised to repeal the executive order on Artificial Intelligence released by US President Joe Biden last year. The Republican party pledges say that the executive order will harm Artificial Intelligence.
It will be possible for Trump to implement his plan as soon as he enters the White House given that executive orders can be revoked by a president at any time. But what will Trump put in its place?
Can the Trump-Kenneda Agreement Go Wild on Public Health and Public Safety? An Analysis of Biden’s Paris Agreement with the Office of the Vice President
At Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the director of the Center for Technology Responsibility, Enlightenment and Re-design said that the emphasis would shift away from the regulatory environment to technology companies making their own voluntary decisions on safety. Venkatasubramanian is not sure if that will suffice to address concerns about public safety, dataprivacy, and the use of biased Algorithms that are detrimental to certain groups.
Many federal climate efforts are likely to stall under Trump who denies the threat of climate change while promoting domestic fossil-fuel production. Policy specialists say that the shift towards clean energy isn’t going to be stopped by Trump.
It will be difficult to reverse Biden’s signature climate achievement: the Inflation Reduction Act, which created a raft of federal investments now estimated at more than a trillion dollars in climate and clean energy that are scheduled to run until around 2032. Repealing that legislation would require an act of the US Congress. But even if Republicans end up in control of both congressional chambers, businesses and leaders in conservative US states that are already benefitting from IRA investments might not be eager to cut off the flow of federal money, says Joanna Lewis, who heads the science technology and international affairs programme at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
The president-elect plans to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, which commits member countries to limiting globalwarming to 1.5–2 C above preindustrial levels. Biden swiftly rejoined the agreement when he took office several months later, but Trump and his administration had to wait until 2020 to formally leave. The process of leaving would take one year under the rules of the agreement.
Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr., a political figure, put together a platform that promised to make America healthy again by tackling the root causes of chronic diseases, removing toxic substances from the environment and fighting corporate corruption. Trump has said that he will let Kennedy, who has questioned vaccine effectiveness, “go wild on” health, unnerving public-health and health-policy researchers.
It is not certain whether or not Kennedy will be appointed as Director of US Health and Human Services, but it is clear that Kennedy will have the ear of Trump on health issues.
With Trump’s isolationalist approach and past comments he has made criticizing the World Health Organization, support for global health will also likely be “greatly scaled back” during Trump’s second term, says Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and long-time observer of the US biomedical funding landscape at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The United States is “the key player” in funding of global-health initiatives, says Emanuel. A programme to end the global epidemic of AIDS is included. So it’s “hard to be optimistic” about the future, he adds.
The second Trump administration may resurrect the China Initiative, despite the fact that the US House of Representatives advanced legislation in September that would do so. But a reinstatement of the travel ban is likely, says Adam Cohen, a lawyer at Siskind Susser in Memphis, Tennessee, who focuses on academic immigration and who says the president has broad authority to institute such policies.
But there might be one bright spot on the collaboration front, at least for US-China partnerships. Denis Simon, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a foreign policy think tank in Washington DC, thinks that a crucial pact governing US-China scientific cooperation that has been expired for the past year is likely to be signed by the Biden administration before Trump’s second inauguration in January. Simon said that a renewal of the agreement would show both governments that they give their blessing to collaboration.
