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The university, a leader in scientific research, has been hard hit by the Trump administration’s cuts, which will slash at least $800 million from its budget. Johns Hopkins University, one of the country’s leading centers of scientific research, said on Thursday that it would eliminate more than 2,000 workers in the United States and abroad because of the Trump administration’s steep cuts, primarily to international aid programs.
The layoffs, the most in the university’s history, will involve 247 domestic workers for the university, which is based in Baltimore, and an affiliated center. Another 1,975 positions will be cut in 44 countries. They affect the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and an affiliated nonprofit.
Nearly half the school’s total revenue last year came from federally funded research, including $800 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Johns Hopkins is one of the top university recipients of the funding that the administration is aiming to slash. And it appears to be among the most deeply affected of the major research institutions that are reeling from cuts — or the threat of cuts — to federal money that they depend on for research studies and running labs.
In a statement on Thursday Johns Hopkins said it was “immensely proud” of its work on the projects, which included efforts to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water and advance countless other critical, lifesaving efforts around the world.” In ordering cutbacks in the agency, which amount to a 90 percent reduction in its operations, President Trump said that it was run by “radical left lunatics” and that is was riddled with “tremendous fraud.”
The administration has also sought to reduce the amount of money that the National Institutes of Health sends to university for research, cuts that have been blocked for now in the courts. If they go into effect, those cuts would reduce federal payments to Johns Hopkins by more than $100 million a year, according to an analysis of university figures. The university, which receives about $1 billion a year in N.I.H. funding and is currently running 600 clinical trials, is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging those cuts.
The cuts at Johns Hopkins involve programs funded by U.S.A.I.D. through which American universities have worked with global partners, largely to advance public health and agricultural research. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that 5,200 of the agency’s 6,200 contracts had been canceled and that the remaining programs would be operated directly by the State Department, eliminating the need for U.S.A.I.D., which is under the State Department.
Research projects that are being eliminated include international work on tuberculosis, AIDS and cervical cancer, as well as programs that directly benefit residents of Baltimore.
What is essentially a shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. has had significant effects at universities around the country. An organization called USAID StopWork, which is tracking the layoffs, said that overall, 14,000 domestic workers had lost their jobs so far, with thousands more anticipated.
Research by the Federal Reserve shows that universities serve as major economic engines in many agriculture regions, from Iowa to Florida, meaning that the impact of the administration’s cuts to science research will be felt in both red states and left-leaning communities like Baltimore. The elimination of a $500 million agriculture project called Feed the Future, which funded agriculture labs at 19 universities in 17 states, means many of those labs must shutter.
Economic ripple effects of the funding cuts are expected to spread through the Baltimore area. Johns Hopkins, which enrolls about 30,000 students, is also one of Maryland’s largest private employers.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
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Comments
Good thing Bloomberg sends them lots of Cash. He will probably make up some of this but the public needs to hear how these cuts are destroying the US position in the world.
Everyone in favor of continuing $2 trillion annual govt deficits and handing the debt to the grandkids, raise your hands.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republican-congressman-faces-extended-boos-jeers-rowdy-town-hall-rcna196413
Can you say "extension of tax breaks for the rich?" Once again you haven't been paying attention.
At all
jesus —- send bill to grandkids? seriously? How would that go?
If you are so profoundly uninformed, why do you post here? Why not read up and keep up and understand how these things work?
Hopkins, along with Chicago, MIT, Caltech, and a few others are the epiteme of the great research university. Unbridled life of the mind and inquiry versus self-congratulatory charm schools.
USA once had a research infrastructure (academic, government) that was the envy of the world. There were discoveries and advances that seemingly could only happen in the US.
Trump is dismanteling that. As David Brooks said recently -- MAGA isn't populism, its about a new form of billionaire arrogance and anti-institutionalism.
Was their some waste and silliness? Yes, but that's highly likely -- just likely any large enterprise. But, there was a lot of good important work being done as well. And I know dozens of civil servants who truly are (were) all-in and mission-committed.
Do I think Biden & Co did a poor job and are guilty overreach on several things (policy and cultural)? Yes, I do. But the way DJT implements all this of rash and vindictive. And driven by almost comical vanity. Kiss the ring, suck the toes.
As Charlie Munger once said -- Trump should not be president, he doesn't have the temperament and has a penchant for vain-glory. He's thin-skinned and has the attention span of a gnatt.
We're in month 3, everybody.