Welcome everyone to episode two of the Nonprofits. This week tonight, we're going to go to John Hopkins University where they're serving excuse me, they are serving as an example of not only just slashing AID or cutting spending, but perhaps as a dismantling of the education system in this country. AJ has more to break down.
Thank you. At John Hopkins University, they're set to eliminate over two thousand jobs following the current administration's decision to cut eight hundred million dollars in funding from the US
Agency for International Development, also known as USA. This reduction will affect about two hundred and fifty positions in the United States and almost two thousand roles across forty four countries, impacting the Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is their medical school, and the affiliated nonprofit, which focuses on international health initiatives like maternal health or disease prevention. So the loss of funding weapons critical health projects worldwide, including efforts
to combat HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. These layoffs come after several major universities have faced financial challenges due to significant federal funding cuts. This story is from CNN by Knida Ayr On March thirteen, twenty twenty five.
Yeah, and you know, AJ, when I first read this, the way that I took it, or the main point that I took away from this was another attack on our education systems in this country. But I think that you highlight a little bit different point, although the both points are are adjoined in some way. You talk a lot about the cuts to international employees. What kind of impacts will that have by all these people being unemployed?
Yeah, you know, because of these cuts due to the dismantling of usas, this means that the majority of the layoffs are going to be international employees. One of the sport persons for John Hopkins said that they're really part of the work that their international employees have done, Like they care for mothers and informs, THEYI fight diseases, they provide clean drinking water, you know, they advanced several other
critical life saving forts around the world. And they mentioned that this is actually going to also affect the Center for Communications Programs. This program is the university's messaging around public health and this is extremely sensitive an important program because science communication regarding public health is not something that we should be messing with. It really upsets me when science is in valued. Okay, but this is this isn't.
During the current president's first round in twenty sixteen, there was a major focus on dismantling anything scientific. That's where this major protest called for science came from. Scientists were so pissed off that you know, you know things that really when scientists come out with the lab and they go out on this tweet and protest, so it's like, yeah, so people need to stand up right now, they need to speak up. It's the only way that we're going to get through other lists.
And we talked about on Monday night. You know, this kind of alignment with with Christianity and with the Conservative Party. And of course our president is conservative, his first run at the presidency or his first presidential term, like you mentioned conservative again cuts to education, which we see conservative governments across the country doing, and that I think speaks to again the cuts to science, the cuts to health programs.
You know, for some reason, conservatives don't want to see people get educated, and you know, they actually do better when their voters are uneducated, because I think that that is the class that tends to vote for them, the the non college educated, the working class, and that's no
swipe at the non college educated to working class. But it just seems that the conservatives think that they can do without research, they can do without education, and runs on our public education are happening alongside runs on our colleges and universities. So you know that that's my position on why I think education is always under attack. But if Neil, you had a point about how hitpocritical this all is, and I just wanted to hear your side of how this displays hypocrisy.
Well, you know, we hear time and again that Party of the Family, pro family, pro all these you know, buzzwords that are cheap, a lot cheaper than a that actually affects the issue. But you know this, we see pro live Party of the Family, and yet a lot of these programs that are going to be impacted are going to have very significant global health impact on mothers and children. So I mean it's just you know, they're
they're cutting maternal health programs, vaccinations. I mean, these are very direct harm issues, you know, And what I think is really appalling about it is is that they're willing to allow this to happen for women and children and families to actually suffer in an effort to promote their own political agenda over actual care. It's just hollow, it's not real, it's just lip service. Because you know, this is also a huge impact on what we refer to
a soft diplomacy. We generate a lot of good will across the world by these types of non controversial programs, and instead what we're doing is right in the middle of it saying all right, you're cut, you're off, and and that does quite the opposite. That has an even greater impact on the opposite side, because here we are, we're doing these things, and now you're just leaving us in the lurch.
Absolutely, Oh go ahead, ah, go ahead. Please.
You know I was gonna say, speaking of their agenda, this cut to Johns Hopkins University isn't specifically to this university. It came due to the cuts to USA. And let's just get one thing straight, okay. It had nothing to do with the waste or mismanagement of funds. This isn't about one thing and one thing only, and it's that transgender danger like that was one of the main claims or issues that the administration. The administration has had unshared publicly.
For example, the Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said during a press conference. She said that USA was awarded a two million grant for sex changes in Guatemala.
I want to inject there because I think I think what you're saying highlights a different point, like or highlights an important point I think is kind of being glossed over. Not by us, but I think just from the understanding in general, who are the people that are being targeted. They're not Americans, right in this case, it's brown people that live far away, right, It's people that are like
not like us. You know, it's those people, and we find this boogeyman where it's okay if they suffer, right, regardless of what we say. So speaking to Infidel's you know hypothesis on the hypocrisy, you know these people that are saying, well, this is the way we are. We are a pro family, we are pro life, we follow the laws of Jesus. Don't do any of those things when the people are brown or like brown, or they live in some far off country or they're just different, right,
And so yeah, you're right. While while it might not be an attack on the edge, on the education system itself, or on John Hopkins university itself. The ripple effects, right, the the second and third order effects by attacking that university are monumental and they affect a lot of other people, a lot of other people that are just different. Right, and so AGM, sorry for interrupting, but I had to get that out there, So please continue if you wanted to follow up on that.
No, you're completely correct, Like this is a whole it's a whole cycle that they're doing. It's a circle. It goes like they cut the funds for USAID and they don't realize the impact that that has not only on all of these brown people that are living far away, but also on our own education system. So it's insane to me. But you know, like as I mentioned, like this whole thing about the sex changes in Guatemala, if you go and do a quick search and look at
the facts, you see that that's not the case. The money was awarded to an LGBTQ nonprofit organization, but it would be useful more than just gender firming care. It included things like general healthcare, right, but for trans people, Yeah, that's fine, but it was like general healthcare, like mental health, domestic violence, prevention, speech therapy, all this kind of thing, and only about three one hundred and fifty thousands have actually been given to them. But no, obviously it's not
being use for sex change surgeries. And if you look at it such a small amount.
Well, we saw, we saw that Doge was identifying or falsely identifying. I don't know that the right way. I guess false claims, making false claims on amounts that were being spent on certain things that were not taking place at all. And even if that were the case, right, these cuts across the board are just short term spending
cuts that appease the wealthy in this country. But human beings as a species are being set back because of the research that is being eliminated the way that you know, we fight diseases and that we learn how to save lives better. And so in Fidel, I wanted to ask you when it comes to the cuts, are there other ways that we could make cuts and still save the lives of people, continue our research and save money.
Bo you know, and just throwing this out here random. You know, if we consider the Tesla and space X contracts that the government spends every year, and I'm not saying that some of these aren't for valuable purposes, but we could say more money than those is done going around nickel and diming what they have at the expense of purely random algorithms. I mean, when you and your effort, I mean, because all that's completely random. Of course, we're
just doing what's unnecessary. But if somehow things like Theanola gay gets cut because you know, as far as being mentioned because the word gays in it, and that's what we see with a lot of this, it fits their political agenda because they run on this policy where you would think that thirty percent of the US budget goes to usaid and you know, foreign aid in general and all these other things. And really, when it comes down to it, it suits ourself interest to keep this because
first we're building goodwill in other places, saving lives. That's an added bone, you know. I know that may not mean something to some of these people that we're talking about, but also our own self interest. I mean, do we forget the last pandemic? A lot of this money that we use as far as research and healthcare goes out to help get an idea what's going on in other
places regarding the next pandemic. You know, you know, do we think we've hit our quota for global health crisises in our lifetime, so we don't need to worry about it. All these cuts leave us ill prepared. You know, it's like assuming the storm on hit again because we got lucky last time. You know, it's completely ignoring that being prepared and these proactive actions that we take with our involvement with the well physical health of other countries serves
our purposes too. You know, it's not just we're being good guys, but it's in our own self interest. But we're sacrificing that for the bigionaire class.
Absolutely, and there are ways to be leaders as a country, to lead the free world in an effective, well run administrative administration or government. I mean, that was something we used to pride ourselves on. I could, I would, I would agree that that is no longer the case. Uh, and I would say that you know this run on colleges that have these expensive programs, well, that exactly reflects
what you just talked about in Fidel. You know, we are losing We're gonna lose doctors, right, we are gonna lose all types of health professionals. We're gonna lose valuable training and education. We're gonna lose resources that allow us to stay current with changing viruses, uh, you know, the changing climate, what have you As these these universities, in
these colleges lose this money. Programs that rely on these colleges to be the leaders in uh you know, the the global outreach of basic well being, basic health and wellness for people. Uh, you know, they're gonna they're gonna lose as well. Uh and aj, I think that you had some good points to make about funding cuts on that note, and I just like to hear a little bit about your thoughts.
Yeah, earlier you mentioned, you know how this is an attack on all kinds of higher education and even lower education. And I completely agree. It's like the cuts and the attacks are coming from everywhere and for any reason. For example, last month, there were cuts to the National Institute of Health to their grants that were used for research, and this specifically could reduce the money going to some universities
by over one hundred million. Some of these schools have already had to pull back many of their projects because of these cuts, even though they you know, have been delayed temporarily by core challenges. But as we can see, the funds that were stopped or cut have not been returned to these programs around organizations. So you know, there have been even other higher education institutions that are feeling
really uneasy about the future of their federal funding. There have been other efforts by this administration and to cut funding to higher educations for pretty much any reason they can find. Last week, four hundred millions was cut from Columbia University because what the administration claimed that the school failed to reduce anti semitism on campus, meaning that they allowed pro Palestinian protests. And I mean because of this, they had to cancel grants, they had to cancer contracts,
they had to cancer research. It's affecting so many major universiti It's not even just like they're you know, like you're like, oh, you know, it's a small one. Not like this is Columbia, this is John Hopkins.
These are major. It is huge. And I don't know of precedents for this where education is a prett help to education is a pret quote quid pro quote excuse me by the government. I've never heard of anything like this. And just like we talked about on Monday, how we had a Christian Council disguising essentially mental abuse as freedom of speech. You know, we've got the government now characterizing freedom of speech as anti semitism. You know, Colombia doesn't
want these things. This doesn't help Colombia in any way. People don't get the class any earlier. Operations don't run anymore smoothly because people are protesting for Palestinian rights. But they have a right to free speech and people are allowed to assemble in this country. And who are you know, Colombia's you know, council or excuse me, board of directors to intervene, and people were banned from campus and people were placed under arrest in the past that these protests,
and I'm in New York City. I know that there are pro Israel protests as well. I mean, this is not just one group. So again we're back to othering others, right, othering the people that are not like us, the brown Palestinians, right, the Islamists. You know, it's such a it's such a cop out. It's such a weak position to take to just demonize somebody because you don't agree with them, and then to cut funding that sees to the well being of millions of people. Because let's face it, this money
stretches far right. I've never seen anything like it, and quite frankly, I find it disgusting. And you know, I'm gonna leave Infidel with the last thought on that. So I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add.
Well, yes, And I think that one of the things that's so very important is we hear things like, well, we're going to make mistakes, but we'll correct them. Well, that doesn't help the people who are immediately impacted by your cuts. And it's not like, Okay, we cut it and a month later we bring it back. That all the other people that were in this whole thing are just sitting lock automatons in some closet waiting to get activated and turned back on. So the programs can just
reactivate and continue business as usual. When you make changes like these, especially in many of these low income places that US eight is going to impact, these people who are doing it are may en up in completely different locations. It's not like those things just get restarted. It's not like the people who needed that service in the meantime get to go. Okay, I just put it on ice until now. And I think that that's what it's easy
for us to forget. In a first world country where we do have options, if one option isn't available to us, we may have other hospitals or other resources that reach out to But oftentimes, in the situations we're talking about US eight and these foreign nations, we are the option. It's us or it's potentially death. So with that in mind, yeah, I think that they're being very glib with the situations.
You know, I want to also. I said we were going to wrap it up, but I think I have something else I want to say, because when you say it's either us or it's death, and then we talk about the plight of these foreign nations, and I've talked about how it's easy to make the target out of the others that are not like us. You know, when when this administration came in, they immediately started airstrikes on Somalians.
Who cares, right, just Somalians, right? And then the other day they started another attack on let me see here, on the Hoothies and Yemen. Now we've been at odds with the Hooties for a while, but at the same time that all this stuff is going on, a way to distract everybody from it is to just start killing brown people. And I want I think that we need to make a point of that. I think we need to make a point of that and let people not
forget that we take we treat these people. As a country, we treat foreigners so poorly to the point that we are we are willing to give them death and nobody bats an eye. And we're not only doing this with weapons, We're doing this with the pullback of healthcare and science and research and infidel I thought you made a great point that that allowed me to open it up to the use of our military and foreign nations. And aj I'll ask you to comment before we close out for tonight.
You know, I don't really have any for their comments other than if there is a time to not be silent, this is it.
This is it. Yeah, absolutely, and we are never silent here on the nonprofits. And if you want to see more of what we do, please click one of the links below, subscribe to our channel, share with your friends, and don't forget that there is a little donate button underneath this video. We cannot do what we do without your support. We cannot continue to fight the good fight and execute our mission without our patrons, so thank you for whatever you can contribute, and keep tuning in