For most of the 20th century, the center of gravity in science was anywhere but the US. On the eve of World War II, the great laboratories were in Europe, and American research — especially in physics — was widely seen as trailing them.

Then came the “scientific exodus”: Foreign refugees from fascism — like Einstein, Fermi, Bethe, Szilard, von Neumann, and others — remade US science. One reason we won the war is because America collected foreign talent while its enemies expelled it. And Washington locked in that advantage postwar by building Vannevar Bush’s vision of federally funded university science, which turned the country into a scientific superpower, leaving the rest of the world as one big talent pool.

Eight decades later, the US has started turning off that spigot. In June, the Trump administration suspended or curtailed visas from 19 countries, explicitly hitting student and exchange categories. This spring, it even terminated thousands of student SEVIS records — the official Department of Homeland Security status files for international students — before reversing course under legal pressure. August arrival records showed a roughly 19 percent year-over-year drop in new international student entries. That represented the biggest non-pandemic decline on record, even as surveys

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