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VP Vance to Newsmax: I Reject Fears US Facing Academic Brain Drain

By Michael Katz | Thursday, 29 May 2025 09:36 PM EDT

Vice President JD Vance dismissed Thursday on Newsmax criticisms that the Trump administration's cutbacks on federal research grants to higher education institutions and its focus on revoking some student visas will lead to an academic brain drain in the U.S., with many opting to study abroad.

"First of all, I've heard a lot of the criticisms, the fear that we're going to have a brain drain," Vance said in an exclusive interview on "Greg Kelly Reports." "If you go back to the '50s and '60s, the American space program, the program that was the first to put a human being on the surface of the moon, was built by American citizens — some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War II, but mostly, by American citizens who built an incredible space program with American talent.

"This idea that American citizens don't have the talent to do great things ... do you have to import a foreign class of [students] and professors to do these things? I just reject it. I just think we should invest in our own people. We can do a lot of good."

Vance said the administration cracking down on foreign student visas — it reportedly is targeting those with links to the Chinese Communist Party after it tried to deport some students involved in anti-U.S. and antisemitic on-campus protests — provides an opportunity for Americans to flourish.

"Here's the second, maybe the most fundamental point, Greg," Vance said. "These institutions do an important job; but if you back up and look at American higher education over the past 20 or 30 years, there are a few incontrovertible facts.

"No. 1, the hard sciences, particularly biology, we have a terrible what is called a reproducibility crisis, meaning most of the papers that are published in biology don't replicate; they're not good science. So even our elite universities are not often doing good science.

"Second important point, these institutions — sometimes by their own admission — are engaging in explicit racial discrimination, often against whites and Asians in explicit violation of the Civil Rights Act. If the people's government can't come in, given those problems, and say, 'Look, we've got to have some accountability here; you can't violate the Civil Rights Act,'" he continued.

"We've got to make sure that if we're funding science with federal money, you're actually doing good science. That's called accountability."

Vance said if higher education institutions are held accountable and reform, they will improve and Americans will benefit.

"Let me just make one final point about this, because I care a lot about this," Vance said. "I want these universities to reform and to accept that they are part of an American body politic, that if the American taxpayer is frustrated with these universities, they've got to reform.

"What they're doing instead, what too many of them are doing and saying, 'Aw, the Trump administration, this is dictatorial, this is fascism.' No, this is democratic accountability, and I think universities ought to see it as an opportunity.

"If they do that, they're going to get better, and the American people will be better off because of it," he said.

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