Has anyone done the legwork to demonstrate the degree? The linked article is lists around 6 conferences. Which is not a huge number, in the grand scheme of things, given how anti-Trump the US academy seems to be. More than 5, less than 10 and I assume conferences move around fairly regularly.
It is annoyingly typical that they managed to interview a "historian who studies international conferences" yet fail to contextualise how large 6 conferences is in the scheme of things. Thanks to the Magic of the Internet [0] I can see that hundreds of thousands of conferences have taken place since their first appearance in the late eighteenth century which isn't that informative (averages to >333/year over 3 centuries I suppose).
It's far too early to say. You can't move a conference to a different country on a short notice. You can only hold it with whatever audience you can get, postpone it, or cancel it. For larger events, it's already too late to move events scheduled for 2026, and possibly even for 2027. Maybe there will be some data in a couple of years, but until then, anecdotes and informed guesses are the best you can have.
It's harder of a choice the closer the event date is, but sometime it's just the most responsible thing to do. You won't see many people coming to your event if it's now in a war zone for an extreme example.
It’s not the choice that is hard, it’s the logistics of changing such. Huge event on such a short notice. It’s simply not possible, so you can cancel if you feel your guests would not be safe, yeah. But who would agree to that? It could very well bankrupt the conference.
Indeed, in my own field we are talking deadlines for hosting bids at least a year in advance and an announcement about ten months before the conference is held. Organising a conference with possibly thousands of attendees is a massive undertaking and you can see the link below as to what one of these calls to host looks like.
Here's another example [0]: "Hacker Conference HOPE Says U.S. Immigration Crackdown Caused Massive Crash in Ticket Sales". A quote: "“We are roughly 50 percent behind last year’s sales, based on being 3 months away from the event,” Greg Newby, one of HOPE’s organizers, told 404 Media in an email." No reason to think this conference is especially different from others like it.
An article from Nature, which is targetted at scientists, is the sign you are looking for. The fact that you are getting on HN, is indicating that you get to know of this before other people.
I can say that this is definitely an issue in converastions for me.
It is annoyingly typical that they managed to interview a "historian who studies international conferences" yet fail to contextualise how large 6 conferences is in the scheme of things. Thanks to the Magic of the Internet [0] I can see that hundreds of thousands of conferences have taken place since their first appearance in the late eighteenth century which isn't that informative (averages to >333/year over 3 centuries I suppose).
[0] https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8008585/jessica-rein... & https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/52195/1/BJH2300063_R.pdf