1075 



loaves his countiy to study in a more advanced community will never 

 leturn to his country, and there is nothing we can do about it." *^ 



Lessons of History 



IMigration is a natural plienomenon, and human histor}', as Dr. 

 Adams wrote, "is inseparably bound up with migrations great and 

 small." ^"^ And why it has been so was well described in a London 

 Journal of 1722 in these few simple words: "Men Avill naturally fly 

 from danger to security, from poverty to plenty, and from a life of 

 misery to a life of felicity. . . ." ^^ 



Scientists and scholars are a mobile people, particularly in the ISIod- 

 ern Age, and one of the salient features of migrations as an historical 

 phenomenon is the frequency' with which exceptional people, elites in 

 any society, possessed of above average talents, strength and courage, 

 suffering sometunes no more discontent than the stay-at-homes, had, 

 in Dr. Adams' words, "the heart to brave new worlds." "From earliest 

 times," he observed, "those with get-up-and-go got up and went." In 

 a still more sprightly colloquial vein, nonetheless to the point, Robert 

 C. Cook, a long-time student of demography, gave this succinct ex- 

 planation of the historical process of migrating intellectuals : "Lots of 

 bright people come from Ozark Junction — and the brighter they are 

 the faster the}- come." ^ 



HUMAN MOBILITY AND THE PRINCIPLE OF FREEDOM 



Linkage between human mobility and the principle of freedom is 

 another aspect of migration revealed in history that has particular 

 relevance to the problems of migration today. Freedom of movement 

 for the individual, whether it be a foreign student entering Plato's 

 xVcademy, a dispossessed French scholar responding to King Henry's 

 invitation to teach in England, or a skilled European craftsman im- 

 migrating to America in response to Hamilton's urgings, is the act of 

 exercising one of the first principles of democracy, namelj' , the right 

 of self-determination. 



In explaining policy solutions to the contemporary brain drain prob- 

 lem, L'nder Secretaiy of State Eugene V. Rostow clearly linked mo- 

 bility of scholars with the principle of freedom. Citing the historic 

 example of Erasmus in the 16th century and that of Einstein, Fermi, 

 and "Whitehead in the 20th, all of whom chose to teach in other lands, 

 and noting the oOO-year-old tradition of Americans studying abroad 

 and foreign students studying here. Dr. Rostow stated categorically, 

 "these movements of students and scholars are an indispensable aspect 

 of freedom." In one sense, he said, "the universities of the w^orld con- 

 stitute a single community, helping to bind the human family to- 

 gether." Arguing against solutions for brain drain that would "repudi- 

 ate our own history," he urged that policies should be avoided that 

 "would weaken that tradition, the yeast of the bread of liberty." ^^ 



'^'^ Nader and Znhlan, op. cit.. p. 490. 



8' Aflams, "Talent That Won't Stay Put," p. 59. 



8- Ibid. 



^ Robert C. Cook, "The 'Brain Drain' : Pact or Fiction?" Population Bulletin, v. 25 (June 

 1960), p. 1. 



*» Hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee, International Migration of Talent and Skills, 

 1967, p. 4. 



