Good morning, Chicago.
Economist Matthias Doepke once believed the U.S. was the pinnacle of academia: open, diverse, global. He immigrated to Chicago from Germany to pursue his doctorate, and most of his classmates were international students.
“That’s an exciting thing, to bring talent together from everywhere,” said Doepke, now 54. “That’s how science is supposed to work.”
It was an American Dream. He joined the Northwestern University faculty in 2008, with reams of research to his name. He married an American, became a U.S. citizen and raised three sons in Evanston with his wife.
But their shiny life buckled when President Donald Trump took office in 2016. Threats to academic freedom and hostility towards immigrants seemed eerily reminiscent of past authoritarian regimes. To Doepke, it felt profoundly un-American.
“I felt already at that time, that what had attracted me to stay originally was gone,” he said.
Trump’s reelection was the tipping point. In April, Doepke sold his house and permanently moved his family to England to teach at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He hasn’t looked back.
Read the full story from the Tribune’s Kate Armanini.
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