CSEE Current Bulletin

CSEE Statement in Support of U.S. Science

April 4^th, 2025

Dear Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution Community,

We write to express our alarm over the U.S. government’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. scientific enterprise, and our solidarity with CSEE members at U.S. institutions, our collaborators and colleagues and all scientists based in the United States.

Since taking office, President Trump’s administration has fired thousands of government scientists; suspended or delayed grant review panels; cancelled awarded grants; threatened to withhold university funding as a means of controlling political free speech; eliminated funding for equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives aimed at making the scientific workforce more representative of the US population as a whole; deleted websites and databases that scientists and the public rely on for accurate information; and restricted international scientific collaborations, including with scientists in Canada. These attacks on science have been swift and their impacts are far-reaching.

Science is a non-partisan endeavour with enormous benefits to humanity, from our health, safety, and leisure to our economy and national security. As such, the advancement of science has long received widespread support from all major political parties in both Canada and the United States. The Trump administration’s attacks on science pose a grave threat to scientific progress and to society as a whole.

In our ecology and evolution community, thousands of scientists on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border are working together to conserve biodiversity, diagnose climate change impacts, manage natural resources, control pollution, prevent disease transmission, and better understand the natural world. The U.S. administration’s assaults on science jeopardize these goals. The threat to climate change research is especially serious, as some U.S. agencies have cancelled funding, evidence is being suppressed, and the U.S. government is surveying Canadian researchers collaborating on U.S.-funded grants about whether they are studying “climate” or “environmental justice”. In response, researchers are removing related terms from research papers and reports, rewriting grant proposals, and taking their names off papers.

Science thrives on the open exchange of ideas and data, and Canada and the U.S. have a rich history of scientific collaboration and cooperation that is now at risk. As ecologists and evolutionary biologists, we study plants and animals that move freely across political borders, and most of us have ourselves moved back and forth across the Canada-U.S. border to pursue scientific training, advance joint research efforts, or present our scientific discoveries. Changes to U.S. immigration policy and cross-border procedures, and President Trump’s repeated threats to Canada’s sovereignty and economy, are already weakening these bonds. Scientists and trainees in Canada of varied citizenships are understandably reluctant to travel to the U.S. for meetings, seminars, or research, especially when foreign scholars are being detained, deported, or denied entry to the U.S. for their political beliefs. Canadian universities have begun to issue general advisories about travel to the U.S. and many U.S. universities are advising their international students and faculty not to travel abroad, including to Canada. Beyond slowing the overall pace of scientific advancement, we fear that members of our community, especially early career scientists, will suffer from lost training and career opportunities. As this situation is changing quickly, we urge our community to carefully consider the need for cross-border travel and to stay informed of and follow current national and university advisories.

In closing, we encourage our members to use the tools and platforms they have to stand up for science, here in Canada and in the U.S. We encourage Canadian universities to offer refuge to scholars looking to leave the U.S. and CSEE members to welcome such scholars to our community. Last month, CSEE signed on to Evidence for Democracy’s (E4D) open letter ‘Canadians in Solidarity with Stand Up for Science’ and their Vote Science campaign. We will continue to actively defend the CSEE mission and science in general, and we stand at the ready to support member-driven initiatives aimed at standing up for science on both sides of the border.

Sincerely,

The Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution