多伦多大学校长表示，该校鲜有像现在这样良好的时机，从美国高校招募顶尖教授和有潜力的学生。如今她手中有了更多资金去争取这些人才。
The University of Toronto’s president says there has rarely been such a good time for her institution to recruit top professors and promising students from US colleges. Now she has more money to go after them.
加拿大最大的大学、坐落于该国最大城市的多伦多大学，已启动一项新奖学金计划，旨在吸引数十名博士生。该计划由一位匿名捐赠者提供5000万加元（约合3500万美元）资助。
Canada’s largest university, located in the nation’s biggest city, has started a new scholarship program to attract dozens of Ph.D. candidates. It’s backed by C$50 million ($35 million) from an anonymous donor.
该校称，这将成为加拿大资金最充裕的博士资助项目，并打算招募学者共同开展跨学科研究，聚焦重大社会问题。每年，一个顾问委员会将协助选定一个新的研究领域，为下一批招募对象设定方向。
The university says it will be the richest Ph.D. funding program in Canada, and it intends to enlist scholars to work together on interdisciplinary research regarding major societal problems. Each year, an advisory committee will help select a new research area for the next wave of recruits.
“在任何给定年份，我们都将把关注点转向一个全球性挑战，并汇聚一批顶尖思想者共同聚焦该挑战，”校长梅拉尼·伍丁在接受采访时表示。“这可能是医疗领域的人工智能，可能是北极主权，也可能是民主韧性。”
“Any given year, we’re going to turn our attention to a global challenge and we’re going to bring together a cohort of top thinkers to focus on that global challenge,” the school’s president, Melanie Woodin, said in an interview. “It could be something like AI in health. It could be Arctic sovereignty. It could be democratic resilience.”
“我们对该招募工作已有一套相当成熟的计划，”她补充道。“我认为近年来，我们也在开展更有针对性的招募，因为我们知道学术超级巨星在哪里。”这项倡议推出之际，正值美国总统特朗普政府在多个方面攻击美国精英大学，包括限制国际学生签证和冻结数十亿美元研究经费。
“We have a fairly advanced set of plans for that recruitment,” she added. “We’ve also, I would say in recent years, been engaging in more targeted recruitment where we know there are academic superstars.”The initiative comes at a time when President Donald Trump’s administration has attacked elite US universities on a number of fronts, including curbing international student visas and freezing billions of dollars in research funding.
根据美国使用最广泛的大学申请平台于8月发布的数据，今年秋季申请赴美就读的国际学生人数下降约10%，为至少十年来最大跌幅。
The number of international students applying to attend American colleges this fall dropped about 10%, the biggest decline in at least a decade, according to data released in August by the US’s most widely used college application platform.
上周，白宫开始对哈佛大学、斯坦福大学等九家机构的外国交换签证项目使用情况展开调查。调查重点是J-1签证，该签证在大学中通常由国际博士生和访问学者持有。
Last week, the White House began investigations into the use of foreign exchange visa programs at nine institutions including Harvard University and Stanford University. The inquiry is focused on J-1 visas, which at universities are often held by international doctoral candidates and visiting scholars.
“我们争夺最优秀人才的能力 — — 无论是研究生还是教授 — — 目前正因对学术自由的承诺而得到提升，”伍丁在采访中表示。
“Our ability to compete for the best — whether it be graduate students or professors — our ability is elevated right now because of the commitment around academic freedom,” Woodin said in the interview.
多伦多大学拥有超过10万名学生，其中约2万名为研究生。去年，大约25%的研究生来自加拿大以外地区。中国是之 far 最大的生源地；美国位列第二。
The University of Toronto has more than 100,000 students, about 20,000 at the graduate level. Roughly 25% of its graduate students came from outside of Canada last year. China was by far the largest source; the US was second.
这笔匿名捐赠加上大学配套资金，每年足以为每位学者提供8万加元，或在四年期间提供32万加元。
The anonymous gift, plus university matching funds, will be enough to provide C$80,000 per scholar a year, or C$320,000 over a four-year period.
该大学的新基金是加拿大更广泛努力的一部分，旨在抓住高等教育领域的机遇。
The university’s new fund is part of a broader effort by Canada to seize opportunities in higher education.
马克·卡尼总理的政府已拨出17亿加元，用于12年内招募超过1000名研究者，其中大部分用于在全国各地学校吸引多达100个新研究职位。
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has set aside C$1.7 billion over 12 years to recruit more than 1,000 researchers, most of which is dedicated to attracting as many as 100 new research chairs to schools across the country.
8月，政府宣布已向64名全球学者提供5.04亿加元资助，以将其工作迁至加拿大大学，并在健康和人工智能等领域开展研究和项目。其中约48名研究者来自美国，包括麻省理工学院和哈佛等知名机构。
In August, the government announced it had awarded 64 global scholars with C$504 million in funding to relocate their work to Canadian universities and develop research and projects in areas such as health and artificial intelligence. Some 48 of the researchers are coming from the US, including from prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
新设研究职位之一是著名天体物理学家萨拉·塞格尔，多伦多大学此前已宣布她将离开麻省理工学院，返回母校。
Among the new research chairs is Sara Seager, a renowned astrophysicist whom the University of Toronto had already announced would be leaving MIT to return to her alma mater.
多伦多大学新项目“校长影响奖学金计划”的首批学者将在未来几个月内被招募，并于2027年9月开始工作。
The first group of scholars for the University of Toronto’s new program, known as the Presidents’ Impact Scholarship Program, will be recruited over the coming months to start their work in September 2027.
她表示，美国及其他国家围绕高等教育的当前政治氛围，是该大学寻觅人才能力的一个因素。
The current political climate around higher education in the US and other countries is one factor in the university’s ability to find talent, she said.
“美国已经取消了许多研究方向，包括气候紧急状况、医学研究中的性别差异，”神经科学家伍丁说，她在多伦多大学获得两个学位，并在加州大学伯克利分校从事过博士后研究。
“There’s been a canceling of a lot of paths of research in the United States, including the climate emergency, sex and gender differences in medical research,” said Woodin, a neuroscientist who received two of her degrees from the University of Toronto and did post-doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley.
“如果是联邦资助，目前确实有一些类型的研究在美国根本无法开展。因此，对于一个高度重视科学发现、思想和学术自由的国家而言，这是加拿大抓住机遇、招揽最优秀人才的绝佳良机。”
“There’s certainly types of research that just can’t be done in the United States right now if it’s federally funded. So it’s a huge opportunity for Canada — as a country that cares deeply about scientific discovery, ideas and academic freedom — to seize this opportunity to recruit the best.”