The Brain Drain: an Age-Old Problem Stevari Dedijer

1969 N0.127 CONTENTS 3 The Brain Drain: An Age-Old Problem Stevari Dedijer 6 Should Europe Recall Its Scientists? Alessandro Silj 11 The Community's Mediterranean Neighbors Ferdinanda Riccardi 14 Workers Get A Say Walter Kendall 16 Community Takes Franc Devaluation in Stride 17 EIB Loans Set Record 18 Community Documentation Centers and Teaching Aids 19 Recent Books covER: Euratom scientists at Karlsruhe, Germany. Two ar ticles in this issue consider the "brain drain" of scientists and engineers to the United States. EUROPEAN COMMUNITY is published monthly in English, French, Italian, German, and Dutch by the offices of the European Com munity Information Service. Subscriptions can be obtained from the European Community Information Service. Washington, D .C .: 808 Farragut Building, 20006 New York, N.Y.: !55 East 44th Street, 10017 London: 23 Chesham Street, SWI Paris: 61, rue des Belles-Feuilles Rome: Via Poli 29 Bonn: Zitelmannstrasse 11 The Hague: Alexander Gogelweg 22 Brussels: 244, rue de Ia Loi Luxembourg: Centre europeen Kirchberg Geneva: 72, me de Lausanne The views expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the policies of the European Community. The contents of European Community may be quoted or reproduced without further permis sion. Due acknowledgment, and credit to the author of any signed article, is requested. A copy of this material is .filed with the Department of J11stice where, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended, the required registration statement of the European Community Information 0/Jice, 808 Farragut Build· ing, Washington, D . C. 20006, as an age11t of the Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, is a vailable for public inspection. The European Com munity Information Office is the publisher of this material. Registration does not indicate approval of the contents of this material by the United St ~ ~~s Government. Q Medieval woodcut of university life. During the middle ages, teachers and students had the last word in every dispute over university mat ters. If local authorities refused to respond to reasonable demands, they risked losing their prestige when teachers and students trdnsferred themselves en masse to another city. Courtesy French Embassy Press and Information Service, New York. The Brain Drain: An Age-Old Problem by STEVAN DEDIJER DISSENT AND MIGRATION by the university community have center of attraction for men of science as a result of the policy been going on throughout history, especially in Europe, though deliberately put into practice about 300 B.C. by the first king they may seem recent phenomona to us. Migration by men of of the Ptolemaic dynasty. It was there that most of the best science is actually as old as science itself; and, for at least 2,200 scientific and philosophical work still studied today was done years, concerned politicians have tried either to encourage or between 300 B.C. and 500 A.D. prevent it. Since the beginning of recorded time, the quest for knowl The Twelfth Century's 80 European Universities edge has been associated in the human mind with distant Even in Europe's darkest era, between the reigns of Justinian travels. In ancient Greece, from the little known about the and Charlemagne, one can find evidence of migration by the sixty most famous Greek scholars, it seems three out of four learned and attempts to influence it. More signs appear from of them emigrated as students, professors, scholars, or re the beginning of the Benedictine era (the eighth to the eleventh searchers, despite the fears and difficulties that leaving one's centuries) when European education and erudition (trans native city then entailed. Until 300 B.C. or thereabouts, migra mitted from the Arab countries via Spain and Italy) was tion tended to flow to Athens. Then Alexandria became the concentrated in monastaries or episcopal schools, staffed by 3 monks, and financed and run by bishops, popes, kings, and How to Steal a University emperors. However, the first direct evidence in the form of Nevertheless, history had rarely known so intense or so long a original documents on official policies for promoting or pre migration of intellectuals across political frontiers as the one venting migration by researchers appeared only after the that occured in European universities between the thirteenth advent of European universities. and fifteenth centuries. Every university included foreign The first European universities-Salerno and Bologna in students who, sooner or later, organized themselves into Italy, Montpellier and Paris in France-were founded in the "nations." eleventh and early twelfth centuries. By 1250, there were already nine universities in Italy, five in France, two in Eng In certain universities, Paris and Bologna for instance, land, and four in Spain. By the end of the fifteenth century, foreigners seem to have made up the majority of the student there were more than 80 important universities in Europe: population. At Bologna in 1265, the foreign students were from Catania in Sicily and Salamanca in Spain to Aberdeen in organized into 14 nations: French (from lie-de-France), Scotland and Uppsala in Sweden, from Oxford and Cambridge Spanish, Provenc;ales, English, Picard, Burgundian, Poitevin, in Great Britain to Cracow in Poland and Buda in Hungary. Touraine, Norman, Catalonian, Hungarian, Polish, German, At the most famous universities, enrollment reached a peak of and Gascon. The Italians also had nations. six or seven thousand at Paris and Bologna, three thousand at Despite Europe's political fragmentation, its intellectual and Oxford, fifteen hundred at Prague, and nine hundred at cultural unity, based on Latin and the Catholic Church, facili Vienna. Their teaching bodies were large: Bologna, at the tated migration. The direct causes of this migration were eco beginning of the thirteenth century, paid 23 professors at the nomic, political, social, and intellectual advantages gained by Faculty of Law a total of 60,000 livres. Between the twelfth acquiring knowledge of law, medicine, theology, philosophy, and sixteenth centuries, European universities laid the foun and, consequently, natural sciences, mathematics, and letters. dation for the revolution in scientific methods that occured in These factors, to which must be added the expansion of uni the year 1600. versity institutions and the conflicts it never failed to provoke Abelard, the Dissenter between local authorities and foreign intellectuals, resulted in special forms of migration by scholars and intervention by the Right from the beginning, these universities were cosmopoli public powers. One remarkable incident occurred in the center tan. Pierre Abelard, glory of the University in Paris, was of Italy: the outright theft of an entire university, professors born "abroad" in 1079 in Brittany. He was one of the many and students, by a neighboring state. It happened to Bologna. roving scholars celebrated by medieval poets. In his auto biography, he wrote: "Logician, I travelled throughout prov Bologna's Brain Hunt inces where I had heard the practice of this art flourished, only The University of Bologna's beginnings are connected with to become a Peripatetic of sorts."* the name of Irnerius, professor of law, who taught theory of His constant questioning of accepted ideas made him legal systems there around the end of the eleventh and early famous, and from all over Europe students gathered round twelfth centuries. him. The prior of Deuil paid homage to Abelard in these A bit later, Bologna ran into its first brain-drain problems. words: "Rome sends you its students so that you can instruct Long before the end of the twelfth century, professors dis them ..., hordes of young Englishmen feel no fear at the idea played a noticeable penchant .for going abroad either after of crossing the sea . distant Brittany sends you its young disputes with the town authorities or offers of higher salaries brutes to educate. The Angevins conquer their innate ferocity elsewhere. Thus, around 1150, Placentius left Bologna, to the when with you.... Scots, Gascons, Spaniards, Normans, great displeasure of the Municipality, to found a Faculty of Flemings, Germans, and Swedes study with you and praise Law in Mantua. From then on, to prevent such defections, the your intellect." authorities required each professor take an oath to remain at Such was the international character of European higher his post. It did not, however, prevent one Pillius, who had education, learning, and science. At that time, the political taken the oath in 1182, from giving in to enticing and repeated fragmentation of Europe, where modern nation-states had not offers from Modena. made an appearance, presented intellectuals with both in At the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the centives and obstacles to migration. The concepts of state and thirteenth, Bologna felt its existence threatened by the fact citizenship then prevalent throughout Europe, especially in that not only its professors but also whole groups of students Italy, had more in common with the ancient Greek ideas than were negotiating with other cities for the transfer of their the ones we know today. Citizenship was priceless in both "studium." In this respect, what happened in Bologna in 1188 ancient Athens and medieval European towns and countries. was to occur again several more times in the course of the two Anyone born outside the city walls or the changing boundaries following centuries, in Bologna as well as in other European of a province ruled by a prince or a king was considered a cities and states. That year, the city of Reggio founded a stateless foreigner. Faculty of Law after signing a contract with one Jacobus de Manda who had promised to lead Bologna's scholars. In 1204, * Logicien, j' ai parcouru toutes les provinces oil j' avais entendu dire Vicenza founded its university by appealing to a group of qu'on exerr;ait cet art avec brio et finis par devenir une sorte de professors and students at Bologna who were dissatisfied with 4 peripateticien.

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