2,000 jobs cut, India projects jeopardised: Johns Hopkins reels from US funding halt

US President Donald Trump has not gone after Johns Hopkins University the way he has gone after Columbia, but the consequences are already visible.

The Trump administration has so far cut $800 million from the $4.2 billion annual funds to Johns Hopkins and 2,200 jobs at the university has been axed and several public health programmes and research programmes have been hit, according to The New York Times.

The unpublicised crackdown on Johns Hopkins is the latest in the Trump administration’s campaign to use federal grants as a tool to bend the nation’s public education system to its will and make university, their courses, and their graduates in the president’s image.

For more than a century, Johns Hopkins has been a pioneer in several fields, including in medicine and public health.

In 1889-1999, Dr William Stewart Halsted of Johns Hopkins made the rubber glove that massively reduced infections during surgery and are integral to surgeries and medical practice today. The university also developed the world’s rechargeable cardiac pacemaker, the first effective treatment for sickle cell anemia, and helped develop a spacecraft that smashed into an asteroid that was hailed as the “humanity’s first planetary defense test”.

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Trump’s assault on Johns Hopkins’ goes beyond US

So far, Trump has cut $800 million of the $4.2 billion federal grant to Johns Hopkins. The Times reported that officials at the university are expecting more cuts.

The newspaper listed the following programmes as being hit from budget cuts:

International research: The Trump administration’s cuts to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have affected programmes in more than 100 countries and led to losses of more than 2,200 jobs. More than 1,900 of those jobs were outside of the United States.

Judd Walson, the Chair in International Health, told the newspaper that these programmes covered the prevention of cervical cancer in Madagascar, diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) in Uganda, and building health systems in Bangladesh. He warned that millions of people were at the risk of dying from cuts.

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Johns Hopkins also ran programmes related to TB, maternal and child health, and primary health management in India. These programmes are also expected to be affected from cuts.

• Domestic research: Around 90 research programmes have been cancelled. These programmes addressed autism in children, reduction of HIV’s spread among transwomen, and improving Covid-19 vaccination among low-income groups.

• Other support: The Trump administration has also cut grants to support laboratories and administrative costs to the tune of $300 million.

• New taxes: The Trump administration might slap Johns Hopkins with a new increased ’endowment tax'.

‘Perplexing & distressing’: Johns Hopkins president on Trump’s cuts

Johns Hopkins President Ronald J Daniels has described Trump’s cuts as “perplexing and distressing”.

Daniels said that what started as threats have now turned into a campaign of “cancellations and terminations”.

Daniels said, “Over the past six weeks, we have experienced a fast and far-reaching cascade of executive orders and agency actions affecting higher education and federally sponsored research. What began as stop work orders or pauses in grant funding allocations has morphed into cancellations and terminations.”

The university had little choice other than reducing the university’s activities, according to Daniels.