(AFP) – Prestigious US university Johns Hopkins said Thursday it will lay off more than 2,000 employees around the world in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s massive reduction in foreign aid funds. “This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800 million in USAID funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work,” the leading scientific institution said.
The university is based in Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city an hour’s drive north of the US capital, but is eliminating at least 1,975 jobs in projects across 44 countries and 247 jobs in the United States. New US President Donald Trump and his senior advisor, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, have embarked on a campaign to slash federal spending, targeting in particular support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) for foreign aid, research, and development.
Johns Hopkins University is one of the institutions hardest hit by these drastic reductions. In early March, its president Ronald Daniels explained in a message to students and professors that federal money accounted for nearly half of the backing it funds received last year. Referring to a “historical relationship” between the “first American research university” and the government, he warned that students, researchers, and professors would see damage to programs designed to improve health, hygiene, and medicine across the world.
Thursday’s announcement confirmed that the cuts hit the university’s medical school and school of public health as well as Jhpiego, a global non-profit organization founded more than 50 years ago and which works to improve health in countries worldwide. “Johns Hopkins is immensely proud of the work done by our colleagues in Jhpiego, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Medicine to care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water, and advance countless other critical, life-saving efforts around the world,” the university said.
The university receives roughly $1 billion annually in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is currently running 600 clinical trials, according to The New York Times, which added that Hopkins is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging such cuts. USAID, the largest funding agency for Jhpiego, distributes humanitarian aid around the world, with health and emergency programs in around 120 countries.
Trump, whose appointees are dismantling the humanitarian agency, signed an executive order in January demanding a freeze on all US foreign aid to allow time to assess expenses. Critics warn that slashing USAID work will endanger millions of lives.
© 2024 AFP
