Neither undead nor a doctoral candidate

And not a likely emigrant either

Author

Aaron Weber
April 08, 2025

This week I got an ad on Reddit suggesting that thoughtful skeletons should consider moving to Denmark to finish their PhDs or advance their research careers. If I got the ad, their demographic targeting selection is a bit broader than I would have expected — after all, I’m not undead or a doctoral student or looking to move overseas.

But if they’re pitching this to Reddit users in places like Boston, I’ll bet they’re going to find more than a few takers.

There’s a lot of scientific talent around here. And it’s highly mobile — more even than your typical professional talent pool might be. Every semester, there’s a new cohort of highly-trained experts finishing a stint and weighing their next options. Maybe they finished undergrad and want to begin grad school. Maybe they’ve just finished a PhD or postdoc. Maybe their grant funding is coming to a close. People move around a lot here.

Until now, one of the major risks the Boston region faced was that all this talent would decide to go elsewhere in the US just because it’s so expensive to live around here. Many people stay, of course, because they love this place specifically. But a lot of people are here because the jobs are here, the research is here, the grants are here. Because Harvard and MIT and all the smaller shoals of universities and spinoffs and startups are here, and the opportunities that they represent.

But now, at all levels of our regional “eds and meds” economy, that advantage is evaporating. Hospitals are laying off chaplains and counselors and technicians. Universities are staring down lists of impossible and unethical demands. Administrators whose entire careers have been devoted to caution bordering on timidity now find that there are no safe choices, that storm clouds are gathering, that they are profoundly unprepared for the nor’easter of shit that’s coming ashore.

It’s a virtual certainty that going to work in Denmark’s thriving biomedical industry was a possible but unlikely plan for a lot of Bostonians a year or two ago. And it’s equally likely that a lot more people are browsing apartment listings in Copenhagen than even a month ago.

After World War II, how long did it take the US to attract a critical margin of Europe’s scientific talent? And how long did that expertise support American primacy in science, finance, industry, and strength of arms? The Danes are not alone in making a bid for that talent now. French, German, Dutch, Belgian, and pan-European institutions are recruiting. And so is the Chinese government.

Related: America is Watching the Rise of a Dual State: “For most people, the courts will continue to operate as usual—until they don’t.”

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