Who knew that Johns Hopkins University had a head count so bloated that it could easily cut 2000 staff members?
Honestly, I could have guessed that without looking up the student enrollment. It is a university of some size, and therefore has an uncounted number of useless or worse employees whom they can afford to keep on board because the federal government keeps pouring ungodly amounts of money into Higher Ed, even though the return for both the country and for the students is getting worse and worse.
Johns Hopkins University announces it will fire nearly 2,000 workers over cut to federal funding https://t.co/0bWQan9D1K
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) March 14, 2025
What I couldn’t have told you is that the cuts to USAID would be the reason they would choose to do so. Who knew that hundreds of millions of tax dollars a year are poured into just one of an uncounted number of universities from what most people think of as our foreign aid budget?
You know, that pile of cash we use to feed the starving and cure the desperately ill abroad.
Not, one would think, to subsidize universities with huge endowments to employ people whose work is of…questionable value.
Michael Bloomberg is the largest single donor to Johns Hopkins, I believe. He’s worth $100 billion. He could literally, today, replace the $800 million in federal money that just got cancelled with a single wire transfer.
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) March 13, 2025
It’s striking to read. The New York Times makes it sound like all scientific research will stop at Johns Hopkins because of mean ol Orange Man, but that begs the question: why are almost all the people being laid off outside the United States, and why is USAID funding them?
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, Jhpiego.
Nearly half the school’s total revenue last year came from federally funded research, including $365 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In all, the university will lose $800 million in funding over several years from U.S.A.I.D., which the Trump administration is in the process of dismantling.
Makes you wonder, right? Just like finding out that USAID was pouring money into the Wuhan Institute of Virology too. And all those “independent media outlets” and reporters, and so on and so on and so on.
Breaking News: Johns Hopkins University, a leader in scientific research, said it would eliminate more than 2,000 workers because of the Trump administration’s steep cuts, primarily to international aid programs. https://t.co/hz0mZcjg1y
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 13, 2025
USAID seemed to be the piggy bank for every dream and nightmare of the transnational elite. It threw money around at everything, seemingly, except actual foreign aid. Sure, they threw in a bit of rice, beans, MREs and medicine, but puffing up NGOs, destabilizing governments, and shuffling money off to academia to teach DEI and how to best decolonize the curriculum and the United States.
The workforce reduction comes after Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut 83% of programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday. He also pulled 5,200 contracts that he claimed saved the U.S. tens of billions of dollars.
A spokesperson for the school told The Hill that most of the staff who will be laid off are workers in other countries, but that over 200 U.S. workers will be impacted by the cuts.
“The termination of more than $800 million in funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work here in Baltimore and internationally,” the spokesperson said. “We can confirm that the elimination of foreign aid funding has led to the loss of 1,975 positions in 44 countries internationally and 247 in the United States.”
The spokesperson added that another 29 international workers and 78 U.S. employees will be “furloughed with a reduced scheduled.” It is not clear when the terminations will take place.
“The loss of foreign aid [to f’ing Johns Hopkins University!] has led to the loss of 1,975 positions in 44 countries internationally and 247 in the United States.”
I’m sorry, wut again? Foreign aid. To Baltimore, which admittedly is nearly a third-world country in itself.
If these employees are so critical, why isn’t Johns Hopkins using a bit of its huge endowment and reaching out to donors to fund them?
You and I both know: they were luxury hires that they could afford using federal “mad money.” They do nothing for the core mission of the university.
When I looked at enrollment numbers for Johns Hopkins something struck me: they have 6,044 undergraduates and 25,231 graduate students. I can guarantee you that some of those graduate students are doing studies that will help the world and they will go on to do amazing things in their fields. I can also guarantee you that more than half, perhaps 70%, will likely never get a productive job in their field and are being taken for a ride.
Certainly, most of the people studying, hoping to become academics themselves, will soon learn that there are no jobs to be had unless you fit a certain demographic profile.
Med school? Great! We need more doctors. Philosophy? Good luck finding a job at a university, or failing that, the philosophy manufacturing plant down the street.
Those folks will land at an NGO that hopefully will soon be closed down due to lack of USAID funds. I would suggest that they pursue a rewarding career in fast food, but RFK Jr. and automation are cutting those jobs down to size too.
Like you, I assumed most USAID money was wasted, finding its way into the pockets of dictators and their cronies. I had little idea that most of the money was going to US-based grifters and into the war chests of politicians.
You learn something new every day.
