On a duty of care

Dear Johns Hopkins Community:

For as long as I have been a student, faculty member, or academic leader, the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend has always been a point of embarkment: a time of renewal, of hopefulness, of optimism. It is wonderful to see all our campuses so fully alive.

This year, as I contemplated the new beginnings that so many members of our community are charting for themselves here at Hopkins, my thoughts returned to one of my own memorable starts: entering law school in Toronto and being introduced (one might say “subjected”) to the cases and methods designed to teach students to “think like a lawyer.” 

Even with the passage of time, some of those cases have stayed with me, and one of them—Donoghue v. Stevenson—was the subject of my Convocation address last week to the entering Class of 2028. 

Donoghue v. Stevenson has been on my mind because it articulated for the first time an important legal—and societal—principle: the duty of care. Decided nearly a hundred years ago, the facts of the case are memorable, if not particularly appetizing. The plaintiff, Mrs. Donoghue, sued the manufacturer of a bottle of ginger beer whose contents she imbibed only to find a snail lounging at its bottom. Upending years of legal precedent, the court ruled in her favor, determining that the manufacturer owed a duty of care to Mrs. Donoghue for whatever damages she suffered by her swilling the snail-infused ginger beer.

The decision posed a simple but transformational question: What duty do we owe our neighbor? And it offers a useful frame for thinking about our relationship to one another in this new academic year, particularly given the tumult and discord experienced at universities across the country this past year.

Universities stand as a place apart because of our foundational commitment to academic freedom, the freedom to pursue ideas wherever they lead. We honor and celebrate the right to challenge received wisdom and advance ideas that are bracing, provocative, sometimes unsettling. We do so because we believe that open debate and discussion, the rigorous contestation of ideas, are indispensable to our truth-seeking function. This commitment is enshrined in our foundational Statement on Principles of Academic Freedom.

But this bedrock commitment to academic freedom does not stand alone. It draws strength and sustenance from other commitments and values we share, including that reflected in the concept of an overarching duty of care to one another.

In a university setting, the duty of care calls upon each member of our community to share their perspectives and beliefs on matters that are debated and discussed here. Holding back one’s views deprives the community of the opportunity to benefit from the varying, and even outlier, perspectives that allow us to explore the contours of our own core beliefs.

This duty of care also requires that we recognize the humanity of others, including when they hold views, beliefs, and values that are divergent from our own. Based on this combination of shared humanity and open discourse, we can assess how vast, or not, our differences are and likely find that some are more bridgeable than we initially thought.

The goal is not to force agreement or consensus but to resist the temptation, so potent in our current moment, to reflexively ignore, denounce, or inflict damage upon those with whom we disagree.   

Here, as in the “snail in the ginger beer” case, the duty of care reminds us that we interact with each other not as strangers but as neighbors involved in a common endeavor. When we keep sight of this idea in a university context, we become so much better equipped to fulfill our noble mission: to seek and find truth, and to share that truth with each other and the world. 

And so, as we embark together on our 149th year—those of us who have been here for one week and those of us who have been here for decades—I urge us not to lose sight of this foundational duty of care we owe to one another. 

I cannot wait to see the truth and discovery that each of you—near and far—will continue to realize this year, our newest members included.

Welcome, or welcome back, to our neighborhood.

Ron

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