{"id":5068,"date":"2026-02-13T18:51:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T18:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/5068\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T18:51:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T18:51:26","slug":"2-nobel-prize-winning-economists-leave-u-s-for-zurich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/5068\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Nobel Prize\u2013Winning Economists Leave U.S. for Zurich"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Banerjee and Duflo\u2019s announcement follows the departure of Mark Bray, a Rutgers University historian and expert on antifascism who has been subject to death threats and doxing.<\/p>\n<p>Wangkun Jia\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Nobel Prize\u2013winning economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo\u2014a married team\u2014will leave their positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the University of Zurich in the next academic year, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/samstein\/status\/1978096120443113622?t=IX02MgyJ14ffxNKlXrol_Q&amp;s=19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">The Bulwark reported<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The pair, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/quicktakes\/2019\/10\/14\/nobel-memorial-prize-economics\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won the Nobel in 2019<\/a>, have not publicly shared why they are leaving MIT at this time, but a source told The Bulwark that they are moving due to the Trump administration\u2019s attacks on academic freedom and university research. Reached for comment, Duflo told The Bulwark, \u201cAt this moment we are not commenting, especially given that MIT (where we remain affiliated) is already dealing to reaction to its refusal of the \u2018compact.\u2019\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/governance\/executive-leadership\/2025\/10\/10\/mit-rejects-proposed-federal-compact\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MIT on Friday rejected the compact<\/a> put forth by the Trump administration that offers universities preferential treatment on federal funding in exchange for campus policy changes.<\/p>\n<p>Banerjee and Duflo\u2019s announcement follows the departure of Mark Bray, a Rutgers University historian and expert in antifascism, who has been subject to death threats and doxing after his books were scrutinized by students in the Rutgers chapter of Turning Point USA. Bray, whom the Turning Point students nicknamed \u201cDr. Antifa,\u201d is now living in Spain with his family.<\/p>\n<p>  <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"subscribe-box-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/themes\/custom\/ihe\/assets\/images\/svg\/envlope.svg\" alt=\"subscribe\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Banerjee and Duflo\u2019s announcement follows the departure of Mark Bray, a Rutgers University historian and expert on antifascism&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3485,1062,2051,4329,2790,1202,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-5068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zurich","8":"tag-career","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-events","11":"tag-higher","12":"tag-jobs","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-zurich"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}