My name is Evan Walter Clark Spotte-Smith (they/them). At the time of this writing, I am a Carnegie Bosch Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). I am also queer, transgender,[1] and invisibly disabled.[2] I was, until recently, an incoming assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at CMU, planning to start on August 1, 2025.
I've made the difficult, painful choice not to begin my faculty career at CMU. Instead, beginning September 1, 2025, I will be an Ad Astra Fellow and assistant professor in the School of Chemistry at University College Dublin (UCD) in the Republic of Ireland. In this blog post, I will try to explain my decision. I will also briefly outline my plans for the near future.
I do not want to leave CMU or my home in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am making this choice out of a sense of necessity, for my academic work and, more significantly, for my personal safety and well-being.
Since the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, his fascist and white nationalist regime has taken dramatically destructive actions targeting the United States as a whole, and marginalized members of society within America's borders and outside of them (e.g., in Gaza) in particular. Among many, many others, these actions include: the firing of scientists and scientific experts;[3] extralegal termination of research grants [4] and, relatedly, use of research funding to control institutions of higher education;[5] direct academic censorship;[6] efforts to re-segregate major areas of society;[7] banning medical care for transgender youth,[8] attempting to eliminate gender-affirming care for adults,[9] and spreading falsehoods about transgender healthcare to discredit long-established science;[10] limiting access to life-saving vaccines;[11] attempting to tabulate all Americans with autism[12] in a shocking parallel with the eugenics programs of Nazi Germany;[13] destabilizing the American economy through flawed trade policy;[14] and extrajudicially kidnapping and disappearing immigrants and American citizens, in some cases forcibly relocating them outside of the United States to external locations including El Salvador[15] (with Rwanda,[16] Libya,[17] and South Sudan[18] also possibly serving as destinations).
So far, I have been affected by the Trump regime's fascist policies in (relatively) minor ways. My nonbinary gender has essentially been made illegal by decree.[19] My grant application is languishing in limbo at the National Science Foundation, having (as far as I can tell) never been sent out to review after nearly 5 months. I have experienced colleagues self-censoring (a topic I plan to write about another day). On the other hand, I have not been detained at the border nor kidnapped, and my access to gender-affirming care has not been stripped away from me. For now, I am one of the lucky ones. But the fascists are not stopping or even slowing down their nihilistic and sadistic attacks. As a scientist dedicated to sustainable chemistry and a (gender)queer person living with disabilities, I am at personal and professional risk. The United States is not a safe place for me to live or work.
When I interviewed for my position at UCD, I was asked (paraphrasing), "Would you have applied for this position if Donald Trump were not president?" I gave a short, simple reply: "No." It was the truth. Before November's election, I had fantasized about living out my professional life at CMU, becoming a deep-rooted part of the city of Pittsburgh. I would not have even considered looking elsewhere, feeling that I had already landed one of the "dream jobs" of higher education. As I said above, I applied out of a sense of necessity.
My answer to the question: "Why did you apply for this position?" was more verbose, less simple. Yes, I needed a job, and yes, "any port in a storm", but if I saw two ports close at hand, I might reasonably have a preference for one over the other. That is to say: there were real positives about Dublin, UCD, and the "digital chemistry" fellowship that I applied for.
Location is the first thing that drew me in. Before I interviewed, I had never been to Ireland, but much of what I knew made me believe that it was a country where I could be safe and happy. The Irish Republic has one of the highest scores on the Democracy Index (9.19/10.0 as of 2024) and on the Freedom Index (97/100). While such efforts at quantification are, I'm sure, flawed, these numbers speak to the stability and efficacy of Ireland's political system[20] and its excellent human rights record.[21] Ireland is a country where academic freedom is enshrined in law[22] (to contrast, in the United States, academic freedom is only loosely legally recognized through judicial opinions).[23] It's not a perfect society, with reasonably high economic inequality,[24] a housing crisis,[25] and an understaffed public healthcare system,[26] but hey, it's a hell of a lot better than fascism.
It was also hard to imagine a job posting that was better suited to my research interests. From "retrosynthesis" to "analyzing spectral data" and "automated closed loop experiments", the folks at UCD were speaking my language, emphasizing research areas that I already had experience in as well as areas that I have been actively trying to move into. On the level of the School of Chemistry and UCD as a whole, sustainability was a top focus; my research in energy storage, decarbonization, and waste management would be right at home. I wasn't immediately sure that I would have the support in Dublin that I needed to achieve all of my goals, but I was confident that my colleagues in the School of Chemistry would be excited by my ideas.
As I dug in deeper, I found other, perhaps less obvious things to admire. I could tell that UCD cares deeply about teaching – as an assistant professor, I'll even be required to obtain a teaching certificate – and that they put in real effort to promote equity.[27] The School of Chemistry has a large focus on catalysis, and they clearly care about collaboration (they specifically asked about collaborations with Math, Statistics, and Computer Science). I want to believe that this can be a good community for me to work in.
In addition to listing the factors forcing me out of the United States and drawing me to UCD in Ireland, I feel it's important to clearly state some non-reasons for my choice.
This isn't about money or support. My offer at CMU left me feeling well taken care of, and frankly, few European universities can match the level of financial support available to a research-intensive private university in the United States. When I interviewed, the Head of the School of Chemistry even told me not to expect a startup allocation like I might get in the USA.
This isn't about prestige or status. Yes, at UCD I'll have the somewhat fancy title of "Ad Astra Fellow", and yes, UCD is an excellent school with a good reputation, but it's hard to imagine a university with a more prestigious computational program than CMU.
It isn't about the people at CMU, either. The CMU community has been incredibly supportive of me as a person and as a scientist. While I am sure I'll find a good home in Dublin, I'm truly heartbroken to be leaving the single most positive academic environment that I've ever been a part of.
My vision for the CoReACTER never involved being restricted by place. I always envisioned a research group that could transcend the boundaries of organizations and, yes, borders. I never thought that I would be fleeing to another country, but the idea of having researchers scattered around the globe excites me.
I will not be physically at CMU, but the CoReACTER lives on. Though it will soon be based in Ireland, we will retain ties to CMU,[28] and ReACTERs there will remain very much a part of the organization. I will continue to collaborate with my colleagues in CMU's Department of Chemical Engineering and elsewhere in the US. I will also remain committed to the students at CMU who I mentor and work with. There will, I'm sure, be changes and challenges that I cannot anticipate as I transition from the American higher education system that I've known to the Irish and European systems; when those arise, the CoReACTER will follow our principles to deal with them as best we can.
To those who are choosing to stay and fight in the United States of America, knowing the danger and looking it straight on: I admire your courage and applaud you. I will continue fighting with you until I leave, and even then, I aim to support you as I can from across the Atlantic. To those who are vulnerable and scared: you are not paranoid or out of your wits. Things are dire, and you should prioritize ways to stay safe to the extent that you can. And to those who believe that my response is an overreaction: I beg you to open your eyes to the horrors around you, at least long enough to be shaken into action. Run or fight as you will, but do something, before it is too late.
| [1] | Specifically, I identify as transfeminine and genderqueer. |
| [2] | I have a number of disabilities, but notably, I live with chronic physical illness (asthma, eosinophilic colitis) and mental illness (e.g., major depression). |
| [27] | Fittingly, UCD's motto in Irish is "Cothrom na Féinne", which translates to "Justice and equality" |
| [28] | I will remain officially affiliated with CMU as an adjunct professor. |