Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to episode two of the Nonprofits. This week tonight,
Speaker 1: we're going to go to John Hopkins University where they're
Speaker 1: serving excuse me, they are serving as an example of
Speaker 1: not only just slashing AID or cutting spending, but perhaps
Speaker 1: as a dismantling of the education system in this country.
Speaker 1: AJ has more to break down.
Speaker 2: Thank you. At John Hopkins University, they're set to eliminate
Speaker 2: over two thousand jobs following the current administration's decision to
Speaker 2: cut eight hundred million dollars in funding from the US
Speaker 2: Agency for International Development, also known as USA. This reduction
Speaker 2: will affect about two hundred and fifty positions in the
Speaker 2: United States and almost two thousand roles across forty four countries,
Speaker 2: impacting the Bloomberg School of Public Health, which is their
Speaker 2: medical school, and the affiliated nonprofit, which focuses on international
Speaker 2: health initiatives like maternal health or disease prevention. So the
Speaker 2: loss of funding weapons critical health projects worldwide, including efforts
Speaker 2: to combat HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis. These layoffs come after
Speaker 2: several major universities have faced financial challenges due to significant
Speaker 2: federal funding cuts. This story is from CNN by Knida
Speaker 2: Ayr On March thirteen, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, AJ, when I first read this,
Speaker 1: the way that I took it, or the main point
Speaker 1: that I took away from this was another attack on
Speaker 1: our education systems in this country. But I think that
Speaker 1: you highlight a little bit different point, although the both
Speaker 1: points are are adjoined in some way. You talk a
Speaker 1: lot about the cuts to international employees. What kind of
Speaker 1: impacts will that have by all these people being unemployed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, because of these cuts due to the
Speaker 2: dismantling of usas, this means that the majority of the
Speaker 2: layoffs are going to be international employees. One of the
Speaker 2: sport persons for John Hopkins said that they're really part
Speaker 2: of the work that their international employees have done, Like
Speaker 2: they care for mothers and informs, THEYI fight diseases, they
Speaker 2: provide clean drinking water, you know, they advanced several other
Speaker 2: critical life saving forts around the world. And they mentioned
Speaker 2: that this is actually going to also affect the Center
Speaker 2: for Communications Programs. This program is the university's messaging around
Speaker 2: public health and this is extremely sensitive an important program
Speaker 2: because science communication regarding public health is not something that
Speaker 2: we should be messing with. It really upsets me when
Speaker 2: science is in valued. Okay, but this is this isn't.
Speaker 2: During the current president's first round in twenty sixteen, there
Speaker 2: was a major focus on dismantling anything scientific. That's where
Speaker 2: this major protest called for science came from. Scientists were
Speaker 2: so pissed off that you know, you know things that
Speaker 2: really when scientists come out with the lab and they
Speaker 2: go out on this tweet and protest, so it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: so people need to stand up right now, they need
Speaker 2: to speak up. It's the only way that we're going
Speaker 2: to get through other lists.
Speaker 1: And we talked about on Monday night. You know, this
Speaker 1: kind of alignment with with Christianity and with the Conservative Party.
Speaker 1: And of course our president is conservative, his first run
Speaker 1: at the presidency or his first presidential term, like you
Speaker 1: mentioned conservative again cuts to education, which we see conservative
Speaker 1: governments across the country doing, and that I think speaks
Speaker 1: to again the cuts to science, the cuts to health programs.
Speaker 1: You know, for some reason, conservatives don't want to see
Speaker 1: people get educated, and you know, they actually do better
Speaker 1: when their voters are uneducated, because I think that that
Speaker 1: is the class that tends to vote for them, the
Speaker 1: the non college educated, the working class, and that's no
Speaker 1: swipe at the non college educated to working class. But
Speaker 1: it just seems that the conservatives think that they can
Speaker 1: do without research, they can do without education, and runs
Speaker 1: on our public education are happening alongside runs on our
Speaker 1: colleges and universities. So you know that that's my position
Speaker 1: on why I think education is always under attack. But
Speaker 1: if Neil, you had a point about how hitpocritical this
Speaker 1: all is, and I just wanted to hear your side
Speaker 1: of how this displays hypocrisy.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, we hear time and again that Party
Speaker 3: of the Family, pro family, pro all these you know,
Speaker 3: buzzwords that are cheap, a lot cheaper than a that
Speaker 3: actually affects the issue. But you know this, we see
Speaker 3: pro live Party of the Family, and yet a lot
Speaker 3: of these programs that are going to be impacted are
Speaker 3: going to have very significant global health impact on mothers
Speaker 3: and children. So I mean it's just you know, they're
Speaker 3: they're cutting maternal health programs, vaccinations. I mean, these are
Speaker 3: very direct harm issues, you know, And what I think
Speaker 3: is really appalling about it is is that they're willing
Speaker 3: to allow this to happen for women and children and
Speaker 3: families to actually suffer in an effort to promote their
Speaker 3: own political agenda over actual care. It's just hollow, it's
Speaker 3: not real, it's just lip service. Because you know, this
Speaker 3: is also a huge impact on what we refer to
Speaker 3: a soft diplomacy. We generate a lot of good will
Speaker 3: across the world by these types of non controversial programs,
Speaker 3: and instead what we're doing is right in the middle
Speaker 3: of it saying all right, you're cut, you're off, and
Speaker 3: and that does quite the opposite. That has an even
Speaker 3: greater impact on the opposite side, because here we are,
Speaker 3: we're doing these things, and now you're just leaving us
Speaker 3: in the lurch.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Oh go ahead, ah, go ahead. Please.
Speaker 2: You know I was gonna say, speaking of their agenda,
Speaker 2: this cut to Johns Hopkins University isn't specifically to this university.
Speaker 2: It came due to the cuts to USA. And let's
Speaker 2: just get one thing straight, okay. It had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with the waste or mismanagement of funds. This isn't
Speaker 2: about one thing and one thing only, and it's that
Speaker 2: transgender danger like that was one of the main claims
Speaker 2: or issues that the administration. The administration has had unshared publicly.
Speaker 2: For example, the Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said during a
Speaker 2: press conference. She said that USA was awarded a two
Speaker 2: million grant for sex changes in Guatemala.
Speaker 1: I want to inject there because I think I think
Speaker 1: what you're saying highlights a different point, like or highlights
Speaker 1: an important point I think is kind of being glossed over.
Speaker 1: Not by us, but I think just from the understanding
Speaker 1: in general, who are the people that are being targeted.
Speaker 1: They're not Americans, right in this case, it's brown people
Speaker 1: that live far away, right, It's people that are like
Speaker 1: not like us. You know, it's those people, and we
Speaker 1: find this boogeyman where it's okay if they suffer, right,
Speaker 1: regardless of what we say. So speaking to Infidel's you
Speaker 1: know hypothesis on the hypocrisy, you know these people that
Speaker 1: are saying, well, this is the way we are. We
Speaker 1: are a pro family, we are pro life, we follow
Speaker 1: the laws of Jesus. Don't do any of those things
Speaker 1: when the people are brown or like brown, or they
Speaker 1: live in some far off country or they're just different, right,
Speaker 1: And so yeah, you're right. While while it might not
Speaker 1: be an attack on the edge, on the education system itself,
Speaker 1: or on John Hopkins university itself. The ripple effects, right,
Speaker 1: the the second and third order effects by attacking that
Speaker 1: university are monumental and they affect a lot of other people,
Speaker 1: a lot of other people that are just different. Right,
Speaker 1: and so AGM, sorry for interrupting, but I had to
Speaker 1: get that out there, So please continue if you wanted
Speaker 1: to follow up on that.
Speaker 2: No, you're completely correct, Like this is a whole it's
Speaker 2: a whole cycle that they're doing. It's a circle. It
Speaker 2: goes like they cut the funds for USAID and they
Speaker 2: don't realize the impact that that has not only on
Speaker 2: all of these brown people that are living far away,
Speaker 2: but also on our own education system. So it's insane
Speaker 2: to me. But you know, like as I mentioned, like
Speaker 2: this whole thing about the sex changes in Guatemala, if
Speaker 2: you go and do a quick search and look at
Speaker 2: the facts, you see that that's not the case. The
Speaker 2: money was awarded to an LGBTQ nonprofit organization, but it
Speaker 2: would be useful more than just gender firming care. It
Speaker 2: included things like general healthcare, right, but for trans people, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's fine, but it was like general healthcare, like mental health,
Speaker 2: domestic violence, prevention, speech therapy, all this kind of thing,
Speaker 2: and only about three one hundred and fifty thousands have
Speaker 2: actually been given to them. But no, obviously it's not
Speaker 2: being use for sex change surgeries. And if you look
Speaker 2: at it such a small amount.
Speaker 1: Well, we saw, we saw that Doge was identifying or
Speaker 1: falsely identifying. I don't know that the right way. I
Speaker 1: guess false claims, making false claims on amounts that were
Speaker 1: being spent on certain things that were not taking place
Speaker 1: at all. And even if that were the case, right,
Speaker 1: these cuts across the board are just short term spending
Speaker 1: cuts that appease the wealthy in this country. But human
Speaker 1: beings as a species are being set back because of
Speaker 1: the research that is being eliminated the way that you know,
Speaker 1: we fight diseases and that we learn how to save
Speaker 1: lives better. And so in Fidel, I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you when it comes to the cuts, are there other
Speaker 1: ways that we could make cuts and still save the
Speaker 1: lives of people, continue our research and save money.
Speaker 3: Bo you know, and just throwing this out here random.
Speaker 3: You know, if we consider the Tesla and space X
Speaker 3: contracts that the government spends every year, and I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that some of these aren't for valuable purposes, but
Speaker 3: we could say more money than those is done going
Speaker 3: around nickel and diming what they have at the expense
Speaker 3: of purely random algorithms. I mean, when you and your effort,
Speaker 3: I mean, because all that's completely random. Of course, we're
Speaker 3: just doing what's unnecessary. But if somehow things like Theanola
Speaker 3: gay gets cut because you know, as far as being
Speaker 3: mentioned because the word gays in it, and that's what
Speaker 3: we see with a lot of this, it fits their
Speaker 3: political agenda because they run on this policy where you
Speaker 3: would think that thirty percent of the US budget goes
Speaker 3: to usaid and you know, foreign aid in general and
Speaker 3: all these other things. And really, when it comes down
Speaker 3: to it, it suits ourself interest to keep this because
Speaker 3: first we're building goodwill in other places, saving lives. That's
Speaker 3: an added bone, you know. I know that may not
Speaker 3: mean something to some of these people that we're talking about,
Speaker 3: but also our own self interest. I mean, do we
Speaker 3: forget the last pandemic? A lot of this money that
Speaker 3: we use as far as research and healthcare goes out
Speaker 3: to help get an idea what's going on in other
Speaker 3: places regarding the next pandemic. You know, you know, do
Speaker 3: we think we've hit our quota for global health crisises
Speaker 3: in our lifetime, so we don't need to worry about it.
Speaker 3: All these cuts leave us ill prepared. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like assuming the storm on hit again because we got
Speaker 3: lucky last time. You know, it's completely ignoring that being
Speaker 3: prepared and these proactive actions that we take with our
Speaker 3: involvement with the well physical health of other countries serves
Speaker 3: our purposes too. You know, it's not just we're being
Speaker 3: good guys, but it's in our own self interest. But
Speaker 3: we're sacrificing that for the bigionaire class.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and there are ways to be leaders as a country,
Speaker 1: to lead the free world in an effective, well run
Speaker 1: administrative administration or government. I mean, that was something we
Speaker 1: used to pride ourselves on. I could, I would, I
Speaker 1: would agree that that is no longer the case. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I would say that you know this run on
Speaker 1: colleges that have these expensive programs, well, that exactly reflects
Speaker 1: what you just talked about in Fidel. You know, we
Speaker 1: are losing We're gonna lose doctors, right, we are gonna
Speaker 1: lose all types of health professionals. We're gonna lose valuable
Speaker 1: training and education. We're gonna lose resources that allow us
Speaker 1: to stay current with changing viruses, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: changing climate, what have you As these these universities, in
Speaker 1: these colleges lose this money. Programs that rely on these
Speaker 1: colleges to be the leaders in uh you know, the
Speaker 1: the global outreach of basic well being, basic health and
Speaker 1: wellness for people. Uh, you know, they're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: lose as well. Uh and aj, I think that you
Speaker 1: had some good points to make about funding cuts on
Speaker 1: that note, and I just like to hear a little
Speaker 1: bit about your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, earlier you mentioned, you know how this is an
Speaker 2: attack on all kinds of higher education and even lower education.
Speaker 2: And I completely agree. It's like the cuts and the
Speaker 2: attacks are coming from everywhere and for any reason. For example,
Speaker 2: last month, there were cuts to the National Institute of
Speaker 2: Health to their grants that were used for research, and
Speaker 2: this specifically could reduce the money going to some universities
Speaker 2: by over one hundred million. Some of these schools have
Speaker 2: already had to pull back many of their projects because
Speaker 2: of these cuts, even though they you know, have been
Speaker 2: delayed temporarily by core challenges. But as we can see,
Speaker 2: the funds that were stopped or cut have not been
Speaker 2: returned to these programs around organizations. So you know, there
Speaker 2: have been even other higher education institutions that are feeling
Speaker 2: really uneasy about the future of their federal funding. There
Speaker 2: have been other efforts by this administration and to cut
Speaker 2: funding to higher educations for pretty much any reason they
Speaker 2: can find. Last week, four hundred millions was cut from
Speaker 2: Columbia University because what the administration claimed that the school
Speaker 2: failed to reduce anti semitism on campus, meaning that they
Speaker 2: allowed pro Palestinian protests. And I mean because of this,
Speaker 2: they had to cancel grants, they had to cancer contracts,
Speaker 2: they had to cancer research. It's affecting so many major
Speaker 2: universiti It's not even just like they're you know, like
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, you know, it's a small one. Not
Speaker 2: like this is Columbia, this is John Hopkins.
Speaker 1: These are major. It is huge. And I don't know
Speaker 1: of precedents for this where education is a prett help
Speaker 1: to education is a pret quote quid pro quote excuse
Speaker 1: me by the government. I've never heard of anything like this.
Speaker 1: And just like we talked about on Monday, how we
Speaker 1: had a Christian Council disguising essentially mental abuse as freedom
Speaker 1: of speech. You know, we've got the government now characterizing
Speaker 1: freedom of speech as anti semitism. You know, Colombia doesn't
Speaker 1: want these things. This doesn't help Colombia in any way.
Speaker 1: People don't get the class any earlier. Operations don't run
Speaker 1: anymore smoothly because people are protesting for Palestinian rights. But
Speaker 1: they have a right to free speech and people are
Speaker 1: allowed to assemble in this country. And who are you know,
Speaker 1: Colombia's you know, council or excuse me, board of directors
Speaker 1: to intervene, and people were banned from campus and people
Speaker 1: were placed under arrest in the past that these protests,
Speaker 1: and I'm in New York City. I know that there
Speaker 1: are pro Israel protests as well. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: not just one group. So again we're back to othering others, right,
Speaker 1: othering the people that are not like us, the brown Palestinians, right,
Speaker 1: the Islamists. You know, it's such a it's such a
Speaker 1: cop out. It's such a weak position to take to
Speaker 1: just demonize somebody because you don't agree with them, and
Speaker 1: then to cut funding that sees to the well being
Speaker 1: of millions of people. Because let's face it, this money
Speaker 1: stretches far right. I've never seen anything like it, and
Speaker 1: quite frankly, I find it disgusting. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna leave Infidel with the last thought on that. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, And I think that one of the things
Speaker 3: that's so very important is we hear things like, well,
Speaker 3: we're going to make mistakes, but we'll correct them. Well,
Speaker 3: that doesn't help the people who are immediately impacted by
Speaker 3: your cuts. And it's not like, Okay, we cut it
Speaker 3: and a month later we bring it back. That all
Speaker 3: the other people that were in this whole thing are
Speaker 3: just sitting lock automatons in some closet waiting to get
Speaker 3: activated and turned back on. So the programs can just
Speaker 3: reactivate and continue business as usual. When you make changes
Speaker 3: like these, especially in many of these low income places
Speaker 3: that US eight is going to impact, these people who
Speaker 3: are doing it are may en up in completely different locations.
Speaker 3: It's not like those things just get restarted. It's not
Speaker 3: like the people who needed that service in the meantime
Speaker 3: get to go. Okay, I just put it on ice
Speaker 3: until now. And I think that that's what it's easy
Speaker 3: for us to forget. In a first world country where
Speaker 3: we do have options, if one option isn't available to us,
Speaker 3: we may have other hospitals or other resources that reach
Speaker 3: out to But oftentimes, in the situations we're talking about
Speaker 3: US eight and these foreign nations, we are the option.
Speaker 3: It's us or it's potentially death. So with that in mind, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that they're being very glib with the situations.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to also. I said we were
Speaker 1: going to wrap it up, but I think I have
Speaker 1: something else I want to say, because when you say
Speaker 1: it's either us or it's death, and then we talk
Speaker 1: about the plight of these foreign nations, and I've talked
Speaker 1: about how it's easy to make the target out of
Speaker 1: the others that are not like us. You know, when
Speaker 1: when this administration came in, they immediately started airstrikes on Somalians.
Speaker 1: Who cares, right, just Somalians, right? And then the other
Speaker 1: day they started another attack on let me see here,
Speaker 1: on the Hoothies and Yemen. Now we've been at odds
Speaker 1: with the Hooties for a while, but at the same
Speaker 1: time that all this stuff is going on, a way
Speaker 1: to distract everybody from it is to just start killing
Speaker 1: brown people. And I want I think that we need
Speaker 1: to make a point of that. I think we need
Speaker 1: to make a point of that and let people not
Speaker 1: forget that we take we treat these people. As a country,
Speaker 1: we treat foreigners so poorly to the point that we
Speaker 1: are we are willing to give them death and nobody
Speaker 1: bats an eye. And we're not only doing this with weapons,
Speaker 1: We're doing this with the pullback of healthcare and science
Speaker 1: and research and infidel I thought you made a great
Speaker 1: point that that allowed me to open it up to
Speaker 1: the use of our military and foreign nations. And aj
Speaker 1: I'll ask you to comment before we close out for tonight.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't really have any for their comments
Speaker 2: other than if there is a time to not be silent,
Speaker 2: this is it.
Speaker 1: This is it. Yeah, absolutely, and we are never silent
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