Johns Hopkins and the spiral of spite

I made a decision and I'm glad about it.

I had the flamethrower ready today, but I reconsidered. Or maybe God got my attention. The Trump administration—the president himself—has put billions of dollars that were already granted to various programs around the world, in timeout. The money may, or may not, be paid, depending on how it works out in the courts. (The courts are going to be very busy over the next months (years?) dealing with all the things Trump is doing single-handedly.) Many of these cuts are to spite the people Trump considers to be his enemies. And to spite Trump, his enemies are accelerating the ruination, paying it forward.

Image: Grok

The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has an international aid affiliate called Jhpiego, which exists to deploy about $800 million in USAID funding that it receives for its work overseas. That funding is terminated (pending court decisions), and the nonprofit decided to lay off 1,975 people in 44 countries. I had the flamethrower ready because Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s endowment (which is not publicly reported), is estimated at over $13 billion. This include a $1 billion donation from Mike Bloomberg, which was earmarked to cover the tuition costs of most students.

From a financial viewpoint, the liquidity and gain on a $13 billion endowment should yield somewhere between $500 to $800 million annually. This money, which is sitting in investment accounts, some of it in the very countries where Jhpiego workers are laid off, could fund pretty much the entirety of a year’s operations, with enough to continue what USAID isn’t funding anymore. Not only that, Jhpiego and Johns Hopkins could go out and raise money from the deep pockets that fund the rest of their endeavors that are not government-funded.

The only reason I could see that they’d skip to the end and just lay everyone off is to make it painful. Dr. Leslie D. Mancuso is the current CEO of Jhpiego. She’s retiring in July. The chairman on Jhpiego’s international advisory committee, Dr. Howie Mandel (I kid you not), wrote a heartfelt thank-you on the organization’s website to Dr. Mancuso. I am absolutely certain this is not the way Dr. Mancuso wants to end her tenure. I am even more sure that Dr. Mandel and the rest of the board are not happy about having the wind down what must be a substantial portion of the work they’ve supported for years.

So who made the decision? I don’t know. Someone at Johns Hopkins decided that it would be better to signal to the world that the actions of the Trump administration are reprehensible, because a few thousand people will be unemployed, when in reality JH has deep enough pockets, and well-heeled donors, who could take up the slack for the government.

I was going to blast these people, whoever they are, for their spite. But what would that accomplish? The destruction of USAID was done in spite. Paying spite forward is not something that benefits anyone. It would be better if Johns Hopkins took the high road, and endeavored to privately fund its operations without USAID. That would be, in my mind, the proper response.

My flaming Johns Hopkins for flaming the president and his sidekick Elon Musk would just feed into the spiral of spite. I don’t want to pay that forward. Honestly, I have no idea what projects Jhpiego was running using USAID funding. I could spend a lot of time getting educated on it, but I am fairly certain that some of the things Dr. Mancuso cherished would be things I don’t agree with. (Just a small perusing of her bio at the US-ASEAN Business Council was enough.) But some other projects likely saved lives and helped areas where medical care is desperately needed.

I’d rather focus on the positives here. I am fine with USAID winding down, and being replaced with private philanthropy. I am not fine doing it with a chainsaw and dynamite. I am not fine with Johns Hopkins choosing to light a very short fuse and letting it blow up, harming thousands of people. Now, I don’t pretend to know what the terms of the layoffs are, so it’s possible that the nonprofit was generous with severance, or continued some form of support for the laid off workers. But if that’s true, the announcement was done for headline-grabbing value, and it will simply turn the knob on cynical responses from the usual people, and incite flamethrowers from humble bloggers like me.

Other cuts in research funding from NIH have harmed university programs like Baylor’s. The AP reported that Harvard, MIT, Notre Dame, U Penn, Emory University, and others have instituted hiring freezes. This isn’t surprising, as some positions are closely tied to grants. Again, it seems to me if Baylor or Emory want to engage in some research, they could raise the money privately, like they do with their own endowments and building funds. Higher education in the U.S. is big business. But they’ve grown used to writing and obtaining grants from the government, and this cycle is not easy (an understatement) to break. Trump and Musk’s way of breaking it is not particularly helpful, either, but perhaps it wouldn’t break any other way, it being a political system.

The problem isn’t that we should or shouldn’t use the government to fund these grants, versus private organizations. There are also private organizations funding grants. The problem is that the cycle of spite at the core of these actions is turning everyone into bad actors.

I was about to contribute to the bad actors club. I’m glad I decided not to.

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