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Office of the President

Announcing a Transformative Gift for SAIS Europe

Dear Johns Hopkins Community,

I write to you today from our campus in Bologna, Italy, where I had the great privilege of announcing a transformative gift of $100 million to SAIS Europe from Hopkins trustee and SAIS Europe alumnus and Advisory Council chairman James Anderson and his spouse, Morag Anderson.

This gift is the largest private contribution to a university in Italy and among the largest private gifts to higher education in the history of Europe. It will advance SAIS Europe’s role as a vibrant hub for scholarship, learning, and public policy—creating new opportunities for students and faculty from across Europe and around the globe to confront the multifaceted challenges of our rapidly changing world—and it will expand the SAIS Bologna campus to meet the needs of our university through 2030 and beyond.

You can see a video at this link.

SAIS Europe’s Bologna Center was founded in 1955 at a moment when Italy, Europe, and the rest of the globe were still reeling from the cataclysm of World War II. It was built to support a world that was reshaping itself in a spirit of international peace and collective progress. Nearly 70 years later, SAIS Europehas secured its place as a beacon of scholarship and cross-cultural education and as a host of activities for thinkers across Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean Basin with more than 8,500 alumni forging careers as leaders across the globe. It also offers a unique bridge to different parts of the world in collaboration with our flagship in Washington, D.C., and our long-standing program in Nanjing.

Now, at a moment when the international order that SAIS and SAIS Europe helped create is more fragile than ever, the expertise and the work of SAIS Europe are more vital than ever.

With this gift, SAIS Europe will build on its existing strengths in international politics, economics, and foreign languages and further strengthen partnerships with European universities in diverse areas of global policy studies.

We will also invest in four key areas:

  • Faculty expansion, ultimately increasing the size from 10 to 20 full-time resident faculty members;
  • Student financial aid in the form of graduate fellowships and undergraduate scholarships and travel assistance;
  • An integration fund to bolster faculty and staff exchanges for cross-disciplinary, cutting-edge teaching and research;
  • A larger campus footprint in Bologna.

I am immensely grateful to James and Morag for their commitment to SAIS and to Johns Hopkins and for their belief in the unique role that universities can play in shaping and strengthening democratic society around the world. The Andersons have long made philanthropic investments in students, faculty, and facilities at SAIS Europe, including support for the renovations of the beloved Bologna headquarters space that so many generations of scholars have called home. This most recent gift will set SAIS Europe on a new trajectory, drawing every corner of our university together to cultivate new ideas, to shape ambitious policies, and to educate tomorrow’s leaders.

In recognition of their decades of support and for the extraordinary opportunities their latest gift will make possible, I am also delighted to announce that we will name our campus in their honor: The Johns Hopkins SAIS Europe Bologna Center James and Morag Anderson Campus.

Please join me in thanking James and Morag for their generosity, which truly embodies the ethos and ideals of our university in its intellectual rigor, global scope, and profound humanity. I hope you share my excitement at what the future will hold as we realize fully our vision for SAIS Europe in the years ahead.

Sincerely,
Ron Daniels

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