The Counterpublic Papers vol. 9 18b

Almost one year ago, I got two phone calls in a row from Darius, one of my line brothers. I was on a Black Faculty and Staff Association call, so I didn’t take them, but as soon as the meeting was done I called back, expecting the worst. 

“Is everything good?” I asked.

”Is everything good with you?” He responded. “Are YOU ok?”

“Um…yeah. What happened?”

The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed. Darius was calling to check in, thinking it was at least possible that either I or some of my folk used the bridge (and could’ve been on it).

I start with this, because over the past week a number of you have reached out about the $800 million figure, thinking I might be caught up in it. 

I am—we all are—but not necessarily in the way some of you might think.

Johns Hopkins University gets more of its resources from federal grants than any other university. The $800 million comes from USAID cuts which support work in one school  (the School of Medicine), and then Jhpiego (a private health development unit), and the Center for Communications. Between those three units, Hopkins was forced to let approximately 2000 employees go.  

I’m not one of them.

The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences gets most of its revenue from tuition not grants.  

There are indirect fiscal consequences. A number of Krieger School departments had searches that were in process and some of them chose finalists. Many of these finalists haven’t been offered contracts because of the cuts, and they may not be offered contracts. There’s talk of consolidating programs in order to save administrative costs. Unlike COVID they haven’t talked about cutting into benefits, and they haven’t talked about high level administrators (and faculty) cutting their salaries, but this is right now. 

This will likely change for two reasons.

The first is that these cuts aren’t one offs and will both continue and spread to other grant-reliant schools. The Bloomberg School of Public Health receives over 70% of its revenue from grants. The Applied Physics Lab? 100%. Future cuts—to the defense budget for example—will likely spread to other schools, and it doesn’t make sense to assume we won’t be affected by them. 

The second reason is these cuts will spread to other forms of university support—like financial aid. While the Bloomberg School for Public Health gets the bulk of its revenue from grants, the Krieger School gets the bulk of its revenue from tuition. This administration looks to gut the Department of Education and doing so will effectively end federal financial aid. 

In addition to the fiscal consequences however, there’s a greater threat.  

Approximately ten days ago, ICE agents arrested Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil  under a rarely used rule that gives the Secretary of State the capacity to singularly identify individuals as potential enemies of the state. Michel Martin’s NPR interview with DHS official Troy Edgar is chilling reading. Last week federal officials told Columbia University to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under receivership for five years for a minimum of five years or face further sanctions. And Friday, March 7, scientists and engineers held a protest in Washington D.C. to defend science against persistent attacks, and the week before that Trump began an anti-DEI university assault.

One of the essential strategies of authoritarian regimes (and ones in the making) is to destabilize truth, and to do so they often end up going after three institutions—branches of the government itself, universities and the news producing mass media. We’re witnessing an aggressive attack against the university itself.

We’re going to have organize within and across the university. To do this we’re going to have to develop skills many of us do not have. The work I’m talking about it very different than the work of writing manuscripts and teaching undergrads, very different than the work of writing newsletters and posting syllabi. We’re going to have to do the work of organizing faculty, staff, and students. 

We cannot and should not rely on our administrators not because they are somehow uniquely cowardly, not because they are uniquely self-interested, but rather because faculty (particularly tenured ones) are structurally situated (through tenure) to defend the nature of the university against the types of attacks we’re experiencing. And administrators are not. Further, faculty are uniquely situated to reimagine how universities function. And administrators (with exceptions) are not. 

We’re behind. But we don’t have to stay that way. We can’t afford to. 

….

I’ve reached out to Baltimore County Library staff, and am in the process of planning several lectures in libraries throughout the area. I plan on reaching out to other institutions in the area for the same purpose. Will let you know when I know dates. Those of you with expertise should consider doing the same thing.

A few current events related notes. I’ll be in Houston and New Orleans this week. Houston to visit family, and New Orleans to attend the National Conference of Black Political Scientists conference. 

On an unrelated related note I’ll be DJing with Brett Dancer at the Dark Room next Saturday from 9pm-2am.

And this will happen after the second mass rapid response meeting at 2640 Saint Paul, at 4:30pm. 

The third Johns Hopkins Racial Politics Summer School is accepting applications. 

And I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here…I’m collaborating with folk at the Damon Keith Center at Wayne State University on a project designed to assess how Trump administration policies are affecting communities in Baltimore and Detroit. We’re still collecting surveys—check out the flier above and share with your friends in those two communities.