For the past forty years, I have taught health students at City University of New York and conducted research on New York’s health problems. Over this time, CUNY has faced recurrent threats to its role as the largest educator of the city’s health workforce and its faculty’s capacity to study New York’s major health problems.
Previous fiscal crises have led to funding cuts for CUNY and political conflicts have reduced federal funding for faculty research on controversial topics such as gun violence, AIDS, environmental threats, and reproductive health.
Never, however, have I been more worried about CUNY’s capacity to educate the city’s health workforce or research its most serious health problems. The threats come from the Trump Administration’s decisions to cut financial assistance for students, slash research funding, reduce support for public health, and attack immigrants, science, and free speech.
Almost 40,000 students enroll in CUNY’s 350 programs that train nurses, doctors, physical therapists, medical assistants, public health professionals, and others. More CUNY graduates work in health and social services than any other sector, and health care is a major and fast-growing sector in the city.
Most CUNY students stay in New York and the majority come from and work in the communities most in need of health care. CUNY leads in providing New Yorkers with health providers who understand their language and culture, characteristics associated with providing more appropriate care.
Now President Trump jeopardizes this essential pipeline in several ways. The president’s campaigns against students from other countries have led some CUNY students to fear coming to class, consider transferring to schools in other countries, or drop out of school. More than 60 CUNY international students had their visas revoked, putting them at risk of deportation.
Some revocations have now been rescinded but the uncertainty makes it hard for students to plan their futures. Our hospitals depend on nurses from other countries, deterring this source of nurses and nursing students will exacerbate staffing shortages at city hospitals.
CUNY’s faculty study the city’s major health problems including cancer, Covid-19 infection, HIV/AIDS, climate and environmental threats, pregnancy-associated deaths, and substance use. After losing federal funding for his research on COVID, Denis Nash, a Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the CUNY observed, “If these cuts continue, it will mean fewer opportunities for students to engage in cutting-edge research projects, fewer scientific breakthroughs and a diminished ability to address pressing public health challenges.”
By late April, 60 research grants to CUNY faculty had received stop work orders from the National Institutes of Health. If Trump ends funding for research and health care for health conditions or populations he disdains, CUNY researchers will have more difficulty contributing evidence that can lead to solutions.
CUNY has long been an engine for moving students out of poverty, training the workforce for the city’s public agencies and businesses, and ensuring an educated and civically engaged population. Its researchers have contributed new approaches to reducing the inequities in health that burden New York.
To allow the president’s hostile policies on student aid, health research and public health funding, immigration, and science to damage the vital roles CUNY plays in protecting the health of New York City will do lasting damage to the city’s wellbeing and its economy. New Yorkers will have to pay these costs with their health and their taxes for decades to come.
In the past, when public policies threatened CUNY, our students, faculty, staff and their unions, and university leaders have mobilized to convince politicians, employers, and the public that maintaining CUNY’s mission was good for New York and the nation.
Today, CUNY students, their families, faculty, staff and their unions, alumni, employers, professional organizations, city residents, and especially all elected officials must join the growing movement to protect higher education, scientific research, health care, immigrants, and democracy against the cascade of assaults from Washington.
By writing letters to politicians, joining demonstrations, protests and lawsuits, and voting, together we can ensure that CUNY can continue to protect the well-being of our city.
Nicholas Freudenberg is Distinguished Professor of Public Health at the CUNY School of Public Health.
