President Toomas Hendrik Ilves at the development conference: "International University of Tartu"

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of the Republic of Estonia in 2006–2016

The opinion piece is based on the presentation at the University of Tartu development conference “A university for us, Estonia and the world”.

I will start from the language, though it is not my topic

In 1632, the scientific language of Academia Gustaviana was Latin.

Until World War II, the natural language for scientific communication in our corner of Europe would have been German. A century ago, German was the language of physical sciences across the world. When I went to university, my alma mater in the USA still required the knowledge of either German or Russian to get a doctoral degree in physics. Today, neither is required. English has become our lingua franca. Perhaps one day – especially if we fail to take responsibility for our future in the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape – we will hold meetings in Tartu in Mandarin.

I will not speak much today about language and academia. I was asked to talk about the internationalisation of higher education – and I will focus on our opportunities of becoming more international at a time when the world is full of geopolitical tension. Not on how difficult everything is, but on how challenging times can create new opportunities. I will look at this from a slightly different angle – how geopolitical shocks are reshaping the academic world and how we can turn these changes to our advantage.

An apocryphal joke with a grain of truth

I will begin with a completely apocryphal story from the 1940s in Los Alamos, New Mexico – a place that, during World War II, was an ultra-secret centre for nuclear weapons development under the Manhattan Project. Physicists Edward Teller, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard and Robert Oppenheimer are discussing the challenges of building the atomic bomb. The American, Oppenheimer, leaves the room, and one of others says: “Good, now we can speak Hungarian again.”

I should add that the same John von Neumann, together with Alan Turing, was one of the founders of computer science. Drawing on their classical European education, they coined the term cybernetics, derived from the Greek word kybernētēs, meaning ‘helmsman’. This happened in the 1940s. Later, it was shortened to cyber as we use it today.

The story is fictional, but its meaning is real – and not in terms of academic language, but rather as an example of how changes in the world affect research and academic life. Teller, von Neumann and Szilard were not just brilliant physicists who happened to be Hungarians living in the US; they were refugees who fled an increasingly authoritarian Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

The academic world and research do not float above history. Political earthquakes move researchers, ideas, funding, and the balance of intellectual power across borders – often across oceans to other continents. Throughout modern Western history, political and especially geopolitical shifts have had a profound impact on universities, research and education.

Four waves that shaped the modern university

Over the past century, we have witnessed four significant upheavals – some larger, some smaller – that have had a profound, paradigm-shifting impact on our academic, intellectual, economic and cultural life. More importantly, they have influenced the economic success of nations, whether by losing or receiving qualified refugees.

First, the greatest upheaval, already mentioned, occurred in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe: hundreds of thousands fled Nazi and Soviet repression to the United States. This migration transformed the American science, humanities and the arts.

This was especially true for Central Europe, primarily German-speaking, as mostly Jewish scholars, researchers, artists and writers escaped to the US, bringing with them an immeasurable wealth of intellectual and cultural capital whose aftershocks, as noted earlier, are still felt today. Germany, by contrast, has arguably never fully recovered intellectually from these devastating losses. The list of selected examples of tens of thousands who found refuge in the US is astonishing, particularly when we consider their impact on America’s development.

And we are not speaking only of researchers who made America great for the first time. Philosophers such as Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt profoundly influenced 20th-century social and political thought; writers Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig and Vladimir Nabokov also fled European tyranny. In music and cinema, we can name Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, Otto Klemperer, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, Josef von Sternberg, Otto Preminger, Max Ophüls, and Alexander Korda – all of whom enriched American cultural life. Leading figures in social sciences such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse and Albert O. Hirschman also moved to the US to escape European repression. Several of them were associated with the University in Exile in New York, which later, when it became clear they would not return to Europe, became The New School for Social Research.

The second major exodus began in 1971: the aliyah of Soviet Jews to Israel after the ban on Jewish “refuseniks” emigrating was lifted: around 150,000 people left the Soviet Union, most heading to Israel. Israelis say that welcoming and funding Soviet researchers laid the foundation for Israel’s high-tech economy and scientific strength.

The third geopolitical shock reshaping research came after 1989: the collapse of communism drove low-paid researchers to flee Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR for Western Europe and the US. Emigration continued through the 1990s and early 2000s. This was no longer flight from repression, as in the 1930s–40s in Europe or the 1960s–70s in the Soviet Union, but rather a rational move in search of work and research funding. In Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR, salaries for researchers and other academics were absurdly low, and research was underfunded. So when the communist regime fell, their scientific world collapsed too. Once again, brilliant minds left their homelands – not for political asylum this time, but to earn a decent living and work effectively in their fields. Sadly, Estonia, like the other Baltic states, also experienced the departure of some of our researchers.

The fourth upheaval is the current situation: today’s academic catastrophe is the political turmoil in the United States, which we are witnessing now.Major national and public research institutions and elite universities are facing politically motivated dismissals, abrupt cancellations of grants, and strategic hostility toward anything deemed unfavourable to the government.

Thousands of researchers with a doctoral degree as well as postdoctoral researchers have been summarily dismissed from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). This is, or perhaps we should say was, the world’s largest medical research organisation and the most powerful funder of medical and behavioural research.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to lay off over a thousand researchers from its research division. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has terminated contracts for hundreds of probationary employees, including researchers and engineers. A particularly telling example of the severity of the situation: when the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), under the Department of Energy, dismissed dozens of staff, the government suddenly realised it had let go of its entire nuclear safety workforce. Other government-run research centres – and worse still, researchers at major research universities such as Harvard, Columbia and Stanford – are facing the abrupt cancellation of grants due to the Trump administration’s hostility toward America’s elite universities.

In short, the US research community is facing a crisis unprecedented in American history. This dramatic development, in turn, creates enormous opportunities for other countries and universities that can offer these people positions where they can continue their work. Some European universities, particularly in France, Germany and Switzerland, are already making offers. But it is not just Europe competing for them. China, of course, has rolled out the red carpet, offering laboratories and funding.

Regardless of the weekly headlines, the net effect is clear: thousands of highly trained researchers and academics are weighing and deciding where they can continue their life’s work. Europe is acting, China has spotted the opportunity. The question is: are we here in Estonia – and at the University of Tartu – ready to do the same?

Our opportunity – if we choose to seize it

In this short time, I have observed that the Nordic and Baltic region has traditionally been slower to recognise new opportunities. We tend to be less flexible than others and, at times, I fear, a little more provincial and cautious. We place the highest value on quality and process. Yet history – as we know from our own experience in the 1990s, whether it be joining the European Union or embracing digitalisation – favours those who seize opportunities first (the so-called first mover advantage). When a number of exceptionally experienced individuals are seeking new places to live, the countries that welcome them gain a lasting advantage – in laboratories, classrooms, studios, and ultimately in their economies.

I would add that we have historically been hospitable to those fleeing oppression. Sweden welcomed a large number of first- and second-generation Baltic refugees, many of whom found places in Swedish universities. Professor Hain Rebas once calculated that after the World War II, 75% of the University of Tartu’s researchers found refuge in Sweden. Estonia, too, has its own history of helping refugees: our first refugee scholars and writers arrived here following the Bolshevik terror in Russia between 1918 and 1920. And later, paradoxically during the Soviet occupation, the University of Tartu welcomed one of the most prominent Soviet social scientists in the Western academic world – philosopher and semiotician Juri Lotman, who, as a Jew, could not find work in Leningrad during Stalin’s rule. To this day, an entire school of semiotics bears his name, and his work in Tartu made the university known in the non-communist world as early as the 1960s and 1970s.

As Lotman’s example shows, we should not only welcome researchers, but also avoid repeating a mistake made in the 20th century: we must not focus solely on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The American renaissance of the 1940s and beyond was not driven only by physicists, mathematicians, and chemists, but also by philosophers (Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss), social theorists (Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse), writers (Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Vladimir Nabokov), artists, filmmakers (Igor Stravinsky, Victor Klemperer, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Marlene Dietrich), and many others. Ecosystems thrive on intellectual diversity.

“Chto delat?” – “What is to be done?” – asked another refugee from tyranny, perhaps less beloved here, but at the time living in Zurich: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

It is our university’s task to make it clear to today’s von Neumanns, Adornos, Arendts, Manns and Wilders that they can find a home and work here, in Tartu. We must grasp the scale of the catastrophe facing the American academic, scientific, and increasingly also cultural community. We do not yet fully understand it.

We must consider revising our rather strict immigration policy for those coming from outside the European Union. Indeed, since the large wave of immigration in 2015 – mostly unskilled labour from the Middle East and Africa – our policy has become much stricter. But today, we are not talking about unskilled immigrants from unfamiliar cultures, but about exceptionally qualified individuals.

What specifically should be changed?

Not to remain at the level of general reflections, I would like to propose a few specific steps that should be taken:

1) A fast track for talent should be created

The government should be encouraged to pilot a points-based residence permit system for researchers and creative professionals from democratic allied countries outside the European Union (primarily the USA), without requiring a prior employment contract. Points could be awarded based on the following criteria: highest academic degree; citations or portfolio (for creative professionals); major awards; leadership of funded projects; contributions in fields where formal doctoral degrees are rare (e.g. composers, filmmakers, novelists, investigative journalists). The process should include spouses and children.

2) The state should fund the arrival of researchers to Estonia

A talent fund should be established to co-finance, over a period of 3–5 years, the labour costs of host institutions, access to laboratories, postdoctoral activities, and language learning.The fund should be competition-based but operate swiftly: applications reviewed on a rolling basis, decisions made within six weeks, and funds disbursed within twelve weeks.

3) Support must cover a wide range of fields

At least 40% of the support should be directed to the social sciences, humanities, and the arts – areas where many US scholars currently feel under pressure – and 60% to the natural sciences, medicine, and engineering. The main criterion should be excellence, with breadth serving as a safeguard.

4) Use of English should be considered where appropriate

During the first contract period, in research groups and English-taught curricula, the lack of local language proficiency should be seen as an advantage, not a barrier. Those arriving here should be offered free intensive language courses and realistic goals for language development over time. It is worth remembering that Arendt and Mann did not speak English when they arrived in the United States!

5) Collaborative links should extend beyond academia

The programme should be connected to incubators, hospitals, cultural institutions, and industry, so that incoming talent contributes not only to academic publications and h-indexes, but also to start-ups, clinical research, galleries, and public discourse.

There will certainly be objections to my proposals. I can already anticipate some of them

“We cannot compete with US salaries.”

That is true, but for many, it is a secondary concern – especially for those who have lost their jobs or face a hostile environment on a daily basis. When the alternatives are unemployment in one’s field or a lack of prospects, and the political climate grows increasingly unpleasant, many choose to emigrate, as happened in the past. What we can offer in our part of the world is stability, academic freedom, excellent infrastructure – including extremely affordable yet high-quality healthcare – and a welcoming academic community. When researchers decide where to rebuild their careers, these factors often outweigh a high salary.

“English is not our language.”

English is already widely used here as the working language of research, technology and industry. We should be pragmatic: welcome first, then teach the language.

“The budget is tight.”

The same was true for Israel in the 1990s. In 1991, Israel launched a technological incubators programme and expanded support distributed through the Innovation Authority (formerly the Office of the Chief Scientist) under the Ministry of Economy. At the time, Israel’s GDP per capita was 14,346 US dollars – significantly lower than Estonia’s today. Several incubator teams were led by immigrants themselves; with government support, newcomers were provided with lab space, seed funding, and mentoring, which transformed knowledge and skills acquired in the Soviet system into start-ups, particularly in the fields of algorithms, signal processing, medical devices, and materials science.

It was precisely the synergy between top-level researchers and engineers and a diverse set of institutions – incubators, research grant systems and universities – that turned Soviet immigration to Israel into a remarkable and lasting advantage in fields such as software, cyber technology, electro-optics, and deep tech. We can do the same in areas like medicine and genetic engineering.

Israel’s experience echoed, on a smaller scale, the massive impact that the influx of refugees in the 1930s and 1940s had on post-war American research, humanities, arts and culture.

In short: targeted funding, aligned with universities’ strategic priorities, can yield extraordinary long-term returns in attracting talent, securing research grants, and driving innovation.

Why is this especially important for us?

We cannot buy our future from the outside. If we remain passive, others will absorb the talent and reap the benefits. If we act, we not only strengthen our university but also accelerate Estonia’s scientific, cultural and economic metabolism.

At the same time, due to layoffs, budget cuts, and the general downturn in the American economy, the number of jobs is rapidly declining in precisely those fields and among those individuals whom we need and want to attract here. As early as on 27 March, well before the mass layoffs and funding cuts of the past seven months, the leading scientific journal Nature reported: “The massive changes in US research brought about by the new administration of President Donald Trump are causing many scientists in the country to rethink their lives and careers. More than 1,200 scientists who responded to a Nature poll — three-quarters of the total respondents — are considering leaving the United States following the disruptions prompted by Trump. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.”

On 28 September, Guardian published the article “US set for largest mass resignation in history as Trump continues deep cuts”. It said: “The total number of expected departures through the delayed resignation and voluntary separation programs, attrition, and early retirement programs is about 275,000 employees. /.../ They are entering a lagging job market as the unemployment rate in August 2025 ticked up to 4.3%, the highest since 2021, and only 22,000 jobs were added amid disruptions and uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs.”

Ladies and gentlemen, our response should be simple: we should open the door, minimise the barriers, and compete to win.

History does not wait. Nor should we.