It's Time for Canada's Brain Gain

Trump's America is sabotaging its reputation as a beacon for researchers, scientists and academics. We should seize the moment.

- Adam Bjorndahl

IN 2008, MY WIFE, Christina, and I moved from Toronto to upstate New York to pursue our Ph.D.s at Cornell University, in linguistics and math, respectively. We were in our mid-twenties, and studying abroad at an elite institution seemed like a wonderful opportunity. The move wasn't supposed to be permanent: we thought it might improve our odds of landing faculty jobs back home in Canada after graduating.

It wasn't meant to be. When we entered the job market a few years later, spots at Canadian universities were hard to come by—the sheer number of openings in the U.S. dwarfed those in Canada. We would've been thrilled to return to the University of Toronto, where we'd done our undergrads, or any of the other great schools that might hire in our sub-fields. But newly minted Ph.D.s often have trouble finding faculty positions anywhere, let alone in their ideal location. We were lucky: I received an offer to join Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, as an assistant professor. They hired Christina as an adjunct lecturer.

Pittsburgh has been our home for more than 10 years now. Life is good: I have tenure, and Christina is on a permanent teaching track. Our children, now 10 and 12, are thriving, and we have a lovely community around us. There's still a cultural disconnect, though. I've always found the reflexive self-praise that permeates American political discourse grating—its insistence that it's the freest, the greatest country on Earth.