Messages

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: In January 2020, after a long hiatus from teaching, I decided to return to the classroom to teach an undergraduate Intersession course on the university and democracy. All the trepidation and anxieties I felt when I taught my first university class many years ago came rushing back. Would the flow work? Had I assigned the right texts? Would the students find the readings as compelling as...

Dear Colleagues: We are thrilled to share some exciting news at the close of this academic year: Johns Hopkins is launching a major expansion of our education-related benefits for our employees. We have heard from you that a better, more expansive education benefit would allow more of you to pursue undergraduate or graduate degrees while working at Johns Hopkins. We hope these expanded offerings will support you in...

Two years ago, we started down a path to revisit Johns Hopkins University’s Ten by Twenty strategic vision and to dream together the next phase of our bold future. Unfortunately, those strategic planning conversations were disrupted by the urgent demands of the COVID pandemic. Today, we are thrilled to announce that we are relaunching this important effort, and I hope you will participate. During our listening...

Dear Johns Hopkins community: Over the past week, we have all watched with considerable alarm as Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, precipitating a tragedy that has upended lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, and is destabilizing the international order. Yet as distressing as the invasion has been, so many of us have also been awed by the stories of courage and compassion that...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: Last month, we shared a draft of Realizing Our Promise: The Second JHU Roadmap on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and today, we are excited to provide the final version of the plan to all of you. Deeply informed by your partnership, ideas, and feedback, and now endorsed by the university’s board of trustees, the Roadmap will help us build on the work of the past five years and guide...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: Recently, on one of the final evenings of the summer, I stood outside Gilman Hall on our Homewood campus, truly elated to be welcoming the more than 1,400 new Johns Hopkins students who were gathered for our university’s Convocation ceremony. In person for the first time in two years, the event felt a bit like a cross between Commencement and an old drive-in movie. So, in that spirit...

On behalf of the entire Johns Hopkins community, I am profoundly saddened to learn of the passing of one of Baltimore’s great leaders, Hopkins alumnus Bishop Douglas Miles. For nearly half a century, from his days as a founder as an undergraduate of the Johns Hopkins Black Student Union through his years of ministry and civic leadership with BUILD, Bishop Miles has never stopped blazing a path forward and changing...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: On behalf of the deans and university leadership, we write to share the news that Johns Hopkins University will be marking the anniversary of Juneteenth as a university holiday beginning this year and going forward. Juneteenth, as you know, commemorates the day—June 19, 1865—when the enslaved people of Texas finally received news of their freedom, two and a half years after the Emancipation...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community The conviction today of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd marks an important moment of accountability, and a shared sense of relief, in affirming that no one in our country should stand above the law. Yet it also serves as a reminder of how far we have to go to achieve true justice for all in our society, and of the centuries of brutal violence and insidious...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community, The killings in Atlanta this week that took the lives of eight, including at least six Asian women, are tragic, and whatever the full details may prove to be, they are also an appalling reminder of the hateful acts of violence and discrimination that Asians and Asian Americans have faced throughout our nation’s history and in rising numbers since the early days of the COVID pandemic. They...