The fight to keep science global

It was, in many ways, the worst possible time for scientists to work together internationally. At the height of Cold War tensions in 1950, American physicist Lloyd Berkner made an audacious proposal at a dinner party: organize an international year of scientific exploration focused on Earth’s polar regions, like those of 1882 and 1932 — but this time, scientists would study physical phenomena across the entire planet, including the upper atmosphere that rocket technology had just made accessible.

The resulting International Geophysical Year of 1957 to 1958 proved a stunning success. Sixty-seven countries collaborated, including the United States and Soviet Union — Cold War adversaries. The initiative saw the launch of the first satellites, like the Soviet Union’s Sputnik and the U.S.’s Explorer 1, yielded breakthroughs like the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts and mid-ocean tectonic ridges, and produced the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, one of history's most successful diplomatic achievements. It designated Antarctica as a scientific preserve, banned military activity, and established principles that continue to enable climate research today.

We live once again in times of severe geopolitical stress. The question is whether today’s scientific community has the imagination and determination to forge similar partnerships capable of pushing back against divisive political forces.

The case for doing so is even more compelling now. Climate change, ocean degradation, biodiversity collapse, and pandemic threats demand worldwide cooperation. An unprecedented global pool of scientific talent has emerged from regions not previously engaged in international research. Tomorrow’s Nobel laureates will come from every corner of the world.

Yet today’s obstacles are also greater than during the Cold War, ironically partly because science has succeeded so spectacularly in transforming our societies and economies. Major powers now see technology as the primary battleground for economic competitiveness and national security. The United States, China, and Europe prioritize leadership in critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors, and biotechnology. Scientific advancement is increasingly viewed through a zero-sum competitive lens.

This securitization of science creates a profound contradiction. While humanity’s most pressing challenges require global cooperation, governments increasingly treat scientific collaboration as a threat. Research security protocols and visa restrictions multiply. Scientists face investigations for routine international partnerships. Universities implement screening mechanisms that treat academic openness as a vulnerability rather than a strength.

The multilateral system itself is under strain, with the United Nations facing active undermining. The U.S. has slashed financial contributions and withdrawn from several of its agencies, including the World Health Organization and UNESCO, institutions essential for coordinating global responses to shared threats. Populist governments and large corporations view critical multilateral frameworks like the Paris Accord and the Sustainable Development Goals as a threat to national sovereignty and industrial autonomy. Scientific consensus reports, like those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are undermined by well-organized global disinformation campaigns, often disguised as legitimate science. Meanwhile, the Global South, bearing the heaviest burden of climate change and environmental degradation, loses faith that wealthy industrialized countries will finally help address longstanding inequalities.

It is hard to ignore the recent policy shifts of several nations, particularly the U.S. For decades, the world benefited from America’s science umbrella — generous support for research on climate science, for example, and infectious diseases in Africa. With the U.S. now stepping back, other capable nations must step forward. Scientific competitors see opportunities to recruit American talent and have launched ambitious programs to do so. But the greatest need is strengthening the international networks that work for the global public good, not merely national advantage.

Opportunities for the scientific community

Scientists sitting in what might be called the "second ring" of the geopolitical theatre — not in the “splash zone” reserved for politicians — therefore have an important role to play. They are close enough to power to influence outcomes, yet sufficiently removed to maintain independence.

The scientific community commands authority through expertise that transcends political boundaries. International science organizations possess neutral convening power, bringing together researchers even from hostile nations. Science is one of the few converging forces in our fragmenting world. Scientific collaborations operate on timescales measured in decades rather than electoral cycles, building trust that survives political volatility.

When the International Science Council’s predecessor was founded in 1899, an article in the journal Nature noted that science “can assert itself even when the political atmosphere is not unclouded.” These words ring truer than ever.

The creation of the European particle laboratory CERN in 1954 was a successful example of postwar diplomacy disguised as a scientific project. When European nations sought access to American nuclear expertise, Washington instead encouraged them to collaborate on particle physics, rebuilding European scientific capacity while keeping weapons technology separate. This brought former enemies France and Germany together as equal partners in a pan-European institution before the European Economic Community existed. CERN stemmed the brain drain to America, fostered European integration, and created rare neutral ground for East-West dialogue during the Cold War. Several countries joined the laboratory before joining the European Union.

An ambitious attempt to replicate CERN’s bridge-building success in a conflict-ridden region is SESAME. This facility, established in 2017 in Jordan, brings together scientists from the Middle East to conduct research using a common synchrotron light source. It creates a rare neutral space where Israeli and Palestinian scientists work side by side and Iranian researchers collaborate with counterparts from Egypt and Turkey. While it faces ongoing challenges, SESAME demonstrates that academic diplomacy can be adapted even to the world's most intractable fault lines.

Another example of a joint science project under difficult political circumstances, including extensive UN sanctions, is the close collaboration between scientists from the U.K., the U.S., and North Korea studying Mount Peaktu, a volcano on the border of China and North Korea that in the past has been responsible for some of the largest recorded eruptions.

International collaborations practicing open science — the wide sharing of research outcomes and datasets — are crucial for addressing the deepening North-South divide. They ensure that science serves as a global public good, providing scientific expertise to low-income countries that often face the hardest policy decisions and most acute threats. Realizing this potential requires an ongoing dialogue across academic disciplines and with all stakeholders: policymakers, funders, the private sector, and local sources of knowledge.

The Pacific Academy of Science, established in 2024 in partnership with the International Science Council, exemplifies this approach in action. This collaboration among Pacific Island states addresses a profound asymmetry: These nations steward roughly half the planet’s marine biodiversity and face severe threats to their territorial integrity from climate change, sea-level rise, and deep-sea mining. The Academy creates institutional capacity for Pacific scientists to lead the research agenda for their region, speak with collective authority, and ensure that decisions are made by and with Pacific peoples, not merely about them.

What can and must scientists do?

This is not a time to sit back. The academic community must organize itself, learn to "push back against the pushback," and forcefully defend international collaboration, especially where political pressure is greatest. This requires moving beyond passive responses to active engagement with geopolitical realities.

Scientists must build and defend spaces for collaboration that formal diplomacy cannot. This means actively seeking out partnerships and exchanges with scholars and students from the growing lists of countries facing mounting bureaucratic obstacles. Researchers should not shy away from recruiting an excellent graduate student from, say, China or Iran, simply because of additional paperwork. At many major universities, faculty members have already formed working groups to support international students and scholars facing travel bans or restricted access, providing legal resources and advocacy.

It means making clear to university administrators and funding agencies the necessity of supporting exchange programs, rather than preemptively censoring the exchange of researchers, data, or communications. Working scientists must articulate to policymakers that, in many research areas, international collaboration is entirely in the nations’ self-interest. Without access to global data, you cannot seriously study the atmosphere or infectious diseases, nor responsibly prepare for future hurricanes or pandemics.

Consider, as a positive example, the remarkable data-sharing networks that climate scientists have built. The World Climate Research Programme operates through a network of more than 190 member countries, making climate model data freely accessible to scientists worldwide, including those from developing nations lacking sophisticated monitoring infrastructure. Efforts like these transcend geopolitics.

Of course, some concerns about knowledge transfer in sensitive domains are legitimate. Responsible collaboration in fields that power critical or dual-use technologies requires walking a narrow path between naïveté and paranoia, preserving open scientific exchange while managing genuine security risks. This demands a sustained dialogue between working scientists with deep domain knowledge and government security officials. Active researchers cannot delegate full decision-making about which areas of quantum physics or biotechnology are safe to share to university administrators or government experts alone.

As a better alternative, some universities have created committees bringing together faculty, security officials, and administrators to develop nuanced policies that protect both research integrity and security interests. This active engagement requires a culture change in many fields, drawing on the experience of domains like nuclear physics that learned these lessons decades ago.

One area that poses no threat to national security and knows no borders is basic research. With new centers of excellence appearing around the world, open exchange is crucial for advancing fundamental questions about the universe, matter, and life. Here the whole can be so much more than the sum of its parts. History demonstrates that science’s contributions to human welfare often arrive after a long and winding road, and cannot be captured by any single nation. The computer emerged from investigations into mathematical logic. Quantum technology arose from curiosity about the structure of the atom. Genetic editing grew from understanding the molecular basis of life. Frontier research infrastructures, such as the next generation of particle accelerators, space telescopes, or gravitational wave detectors, are beyond the financial and organizational capacities of any single nation. Many scientific challenges demand world-scale laboratories.

But there's an even greater goal to international collaboration. Together we must defend the fundamental values that make science possible: academic freedom, free movement of scholars, collaboration across borders, pluralism, openness, transparency, integrity, and empowering the next generation. These aren't ideological goals. They're operational requirements for science to deliver on its promises.

The question before the scientific community is whether we can mobilize the political will and institutional creativity that characterized the International Geophysical Year, but at a moment when the political headwinds are stronger, the technological stakes higher, and the window for action on existential challenges narrower.

It is not easy, but scientists must rise to this moment. Geopolitics is too important to leave to politicians.