More than 80 Nobel Prize endorsed winners Kamala Harris for the presidency, warns that Donald Trump would “jeopardise any progress in our living standards” given his earlier proposals for enormous cuts to science funding.
In an open letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times82 Nobel laureates from the US in the fields of physics, chemistry, economics and medicine said “this is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States”.
The letter, which praises Harris for recognizing that “the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancy over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology,” calls Trump a potential threat to progress that “could jeopardize any progress set” our living standards and hinder our responses to climate change”.
The Nobel Prize winners range from a physicist involved in the discovery of residual light from the Big Bang, to an immunologist instrumental in the development of a specific type of Covid-19 vaccine.
This includes signatories who have won Nobels this month such as molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun, chemist David Bakerphysicist John Hopfield and economist Daron Acemoglu.
Driven by concerns over the significant cuts to science funding proposed during Trump’s tenure, along with what he sees as the former president’s ambivalent attitude toward science and academia, Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University economist who received the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences in 2001. , said he was motivated by the “enormous cuts in science budgets” that Trump proposed during his presidency, as well as the former president’s “anti-science” and “anti-university” stances.
“I hope this is a wake-up call for people,” Stiglitz told the New York Times about the letter. “A consequence of this election is the truly profound impact his agenda is having on science and technology.”
The letter also commends Harris for her understanding of the invaluable contributions that immigrants make to scientific progress on a national and global scale.
Thursday in a separate letter obtained by CNN23 living American recipients of the Nobel Prize in economics, expressed their endorsement of Harris’s economic agenda, considering it “far better” than the economic strategies proposed by Trump.
“While each of us has different views on the specifics of various economic policies, we believe that Harris’s economic agenda, overall, will improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, jobs and fairness and will be much better than the counterproductive economic agenda of Donald Trump,” they wrote.
