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As American scientists and researchers are hit with billions of dollars in federal funding cuts, new policies seeking to curtail freedom of expression on campus and limit the research that gets done, and significant job cuts, theres a sense that the nation has become hostile to many kinds of scientific inquiry. In response, one European institution wants to offer a port in the storm. Frances Aix-Marseille University recently launched Safe Place for Science, an effort to attract and support American researchers during what program sponsors call the new brian drain. As Denis Bertin, president of the Institute of Advanced Studies and the director of the Safe Place program, told Fast Company via a translator, he believes there needs to be a global collective response to make sure important research and scientific discovery isnt stopped during Trump’s presidency. He fully expects such efforts to expand both in France and across Europe more broadly. Bertin has been alarmed about the anti-DEI policies being espoused by the administration, including reports that grant applications will be evaluated based on the appearance of common words and phrases. Americans are so shocked and scared, theyre self-censoring, he said. I want to tell them theres a light at the end of the tunnel. In just a week after the programs launch in on March 5, the university has already heard from more than 40 American researchers. The respondents represent disciplines as diverse as the humanities, gender studies, environmental research, and vaccination studies, and hail from schools like Stanford and Yale and organizations like NASA and the National Institutes of Health. The funding cuts pushed by the Trump administration would be significant for university research. The loss of indirect funding support by the NIH, which supports basic medical and biotech research, would cut billions of dollars from university budgets. And efforts to defund organizations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would severely harm American leadership in climate science. Bertin said one female researcher has already arrived in France, an epidemiologist who studies how climate change impacts the spread of diseases in rural African women. Shes in the midst of finalizing paperwork. She wants to be discreet, he said, but she did tell France Info that Trump’s policies have “created a climate of utter uncertainty and fear. And even if I still have a job, and we receive funds, there is no information on whether the financing will continue.” The Safe Place for Science program, which is receiving support from Frances Ministry of Education and Research, will spend 15 million euros, roughly $16.4 million, to support 15 researchers, with each receiving roughly 600,000 to 800,000 euros over three years ($653,000 to $873,000) to work at Aix-Marseille University. A coalition of local and regional governments and chamber of commerce officials are working together to help new arrivals with employment, school access, transport, and visas. In a statement, Renaud Muselier, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur Region and deputy president of Regions of France, said, We are ready to welcome them and will make them true children of the country! Bertin said other universities, including some in Toulouse, would soon be launching similar programs. Earlier this week in Brussels, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel announced it would open 12 postdoctoral positions for international researchers, with a specific focus on American scholars working in socially significant fields. Additionally, 18 apartments would be provided for international researchers. While Science has reported that universities around the globe have seen an increase in applications from U.S.-based researchers, many of these schools also struggle with their own funding issues. On top of that, other governments havent always been quick to offer support in the form of simplified visas programs and financial assistance for overseas researchers. There have already been efforts by overseas institutions to attract talented U.S.-based academics. The University of Helsinki has been running targeted campaigns directed at U.S. researchers for years to enhance our university’s visibility as an employer for international researcher audiences, said Jaana Nylund, the schools head of development, in an emailed response. Over the past two years, the number of U.S. applicants to the school has doubled. This is not opportunistic. We do it as support, Bertin said of his schools new campaign. Were not closing off any avenues. Were open to anything. He explained that the U.S. research cuts would do damage far beyond the U.S., due to the way research and inquiry in one country can influence ideas and work in others. Thats one of the reasons he falls back on long-standing transatlantic bonds in explaining his desire to help U.S. researchers. The U.S. and Europe have always saved each other through history, and the program that we have set up, hopefully to have Americans at European universities, will be a fantastic response to the current situation in the U.S., Bertin said. It shows that we continue to help and save each other.
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E-Commerce
For decades, talk of UAPsunidentified aerial phenomenon, for the uninitiatedwas relegated to conspiracy forums and X-Files reruns. Not anymore. The Age of Disclosure, which premiered to a standing ovation at South by Southwest this month, reframes the conversation with journalistic clarity and a big assist from some of the most powerful people in government going on the record. With critics and audiences alike buzzing over the documentary, director Dan Farah is pushing the UAP conversation out of the shadows and into the mainstream. That momentum is owed in large part to the fact that Farah (who is otherwise best known as a producer on the 2018 adaptation of Ready Player One) didnt just scrape the surface, he went straight to the top. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Mike Rounds, former National Intelligence Director Jim Clapper, and dozens of other government officials lend their voices to a film thats less little green men and more national security urgency. If disclosure feels like a cultural inflection point, thats because it just might be. Fast Company spoke with Farah about how he landed these interviews, what shook him the most, and what happens if the truth really is out there. What sparked your interest in UAPs? Its not a subject youve really explored in your filmmaking before. I’ve been interested in this topic my whole life. I’m 45, so my childhood was the 80s and 90s, and I grew up watching movies like ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s just always been a lifelong interest. They made me curious about big questions: Are we alone in the universe? Does the U.S. government know more than they shared with the public? I was doing research on the topic a few years ago, and I started getting introduced, through some mutual friends, to people who have worked on this topic for the U.S. government. I started to realize that this is very serious and has incredible bipartisan support at the most senior levels of our government. At a time when Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on anything, Democratic and Republican leadership agree this is an extremely important topic and should be taken extremely seriously. The average person doesn’t know that Senator Schumer from the Democratic Party and Senator Rounds from the Republican Party co-sponsored the UAP Disclosure Act that attempted to bring this information out to the public. When you read the language of that act, it’s shocking. They’re talking about technology of nonhuman origin, they’re talking about all these things that seem very extraordinary but they’re taking it very seriously. The more I learned about it, and the more I became excited and motivated to make a credible, non-sensationalized documentary on the topic. When I started socializing my vision for it within intelligence, military, and government circles, I started to get a lot of support. Why do you think they offered that support? Why did they agree to sit down for an interview? I think I was presenting an opportunity that they hadn’t heard before. I was committed to making this independently so they didn’t have to worry about a studio or a network sensationalizing it. I gave the interview subjects strength in numbers: I was setting off to interview dozens of people and wasn’t asking any one person to go out on a limb. I had the support early on of a lot of people who were very influential in that space, including Luis Elizondo, Jay Stratton, Christopher Mellon. They all really believed in what I was trying to do, and not something to do in a Hollywood way. Now, something to keep in mind: Almost all the people I interviewed have knowledge on this topic at a classified level that they obviously cannot talk about. But there’s a lot of information that they can talk about, and historically they’ve just been discouraged from doing so, or they haven’t had a comfortable opportunity to share what they can lawfully disclose. To the best of your understanding, why has the government been so secretive? Historically, there have been understandable and valid reasons for secrecy. And there are also very valid reasons now for making some of the information more known to the public. For you, what was the most interesting discovery during this process? An interesting realization that came out of this is just a reminder of how our government works in general. Our elected officials largely pay attention to what their constituents tell them that they want them to pay attention to, right? So there’s a lot of very senior leadership in our country that knows this is a very serious situation, and they’re not really putting their bandwidth toward it because they’re worried about an historical stigma around the topic, and they’re not sure its one of the top issues for their constituents. I have great respect for the leaders of both parties right now who are taking it very seriously and putting themselves out there like Secretary Rubio, Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and on the House level people like you Representative Carson, Representative Garcia, Representative Lunathese people are really putting themselves out there. The film comes at a moment when our two major parties cant seem to agree on much. I wonder what kind of political implications mutual acknowledging of the issue would have. This might be the one thing that could actually bring parties togetherand maybe bring adversarial nations together: the acknowledgement that we’re not alone in the universe. But as the documentary points out, there’s also a lot of negative things that could come out of disclosureit’s just another thing that nations could fight over. It’s really interesting to think about the fact that people who participated in the documentary share this extremely significant information that has extremely high stakes and impacts us all. And it’s very serious, yeah, but there’s still so much information they have that is informing their opinion that they cant disclose, and you wonder what that is.
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E-Commerce
Leaders transition for a number of reasonsfrom promotions, layoffs, and changes in ownership. Whether its Goldman Sachs eyeing job cuts or the federal government downsizing senior-level government workers in the Trump era, transitions take an emotional toll. The recent turmoil at multiple government departments that impacts tens of thousands of experienced federal employees is another reminder that leadership transitions are messy. Theres more to change than an unemotional cost-benefit analysis, and thats the emotional toll. Transitions are major life stressors. But we dont see organizations giving leadersnor do we see leaders give themselvesthe time and resources to work through the emotional side of change. Suppressed or unprocessed emotionslike anxiety or grieving what used to bedont just disappear. Instead, they accumulate and surface as procrastination, cynicism, internalized self-doubt, exhaustion, blame, and avoidance. If we dont quickly correct it, these self-defeating coping mechanisms will undermine the psychological safety of an entire team. It can also break trust, which leads to half-hearted execution. In this scenario, even the most vibrant workplace cultures can turn transactional, which undermines results. The best approach is to prepare for your emotions, embrace them, and design them. Here are some steps to follow. Step 1: prepare Most of the time, you can see a transition coming, or at least the potential for it in your future. If possible, you should engage in a few key activities while they have a clear and focused mind. Create a personal coping plan by identifying the healthiest ways that people generally cope with the ups and downs of everyday life. Does music lift your spirits? Does going for a run give you energy? For example, when I left the stability of full-time work to start executive coaching, I committed to making breakfast for the family. This was something I couldnt do when working a 9 to 5. Its also crucial to diversify your support system. Find people who will support your efforts to process and move through emotions, including friends, family, a coach, or even a therapist. Leaning into a special support system supports resilience. It also protects you from those who would rather rile you up or commiserate with you. Step 2: Embrace Embracing the emotional rollercoaster of change starts with recognizing that ups and downs are natural and not signs of failure. The emotional stagesranging from excitement and optimism to fear, resistance, and eventually acceptanceare all part of the journey. Feel the feelings by labeling emotions, instead of letting them exist anonymously. If needed, refer to a feelings chart, like this one from The Work of Byron Katie. Once you have the words for your feelings, its best to get them out. If you tend to bottle things up, try doing something like going to a boxing class to express anger or watching a sad movie to cry. Once you have control of emotional expression, it is time to design the future. Whether its a new job or a new industry altogether, ask those around you, What does success look like? Step 3: Design Once youve embraced your natural emotional reactions and youre no longer running the show on autodrive, it’s timeto design the emotions. You can do this for yourself and others to support everyone’s success. Start by defining positive. We all want the workplace to be a positive experience, but put it into action. You can do this by choosing three to five key emotions that you can bake into your workplace on a daily basis. For example, the leader of a new start-up might choose excited, energized, and eager. The leader of a compliance unit might choose confident, respected, and engaged. Dont just wait for the positive emotions youve identified to materialize naturally; create experiences that bring them out to play. For instance, to prompt excitement, you could build time into team meetings for team members to share something that excites them, and how they plan to celebrate. To prompt respect, you may have a senior leader express their appreciation for the teams work. By preparing for transitions, embracing the emotions they stir, and intentionally designing experiences that foster resilience, we create environments where teams can thrive. Despite the challenges, leadership transitions can be a very positive outcome. Public- and private-sector executives and human resources teams need to implement leadership transition plans, harnessing executive coaches to support leaders for transition success. For example, when a senior director transitions to an expanded vice president role, executive coaches who specialize in leadership transitions can help that leader prevent failure while also building executive presence and business acumen. Similarly, if a successful leader experienced a lay-off and less experienced one steps in, transition coaching can bridge the gap so that the best practices endure. These are difficult times for many, but true leaders will overcome todays adversity with proper support. For those with seniority, the end of the road at a specific organization doesnt necessarily spell the end of the road for your career or your former team. Will you let change dictate the experience, or will you take an active role in shaping it?
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E-Commerce
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