Messages

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...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: Yesterday, the university received the very troubling report of graffiti in the shape of four small swastikas etched into the walls of a dormitory elevator on the Peabody Institute campus. In addition to alerting Campus Safety and Security, we have referred the incident to federal law enforcement as a potential hate crime and initiated our own investigation through the Office of Institutional...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community, We write to update you on some positive developments regarding Johns Hopkins’ financial situation and the relaxation of our mitigation efforts, including a plan for restoration of employer retirement contributions for the second half of the current fiscal year. Thanks to the remarkable resourcefulness and ingenuity of so many, and the good fortune of some one-time occurrences...

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels; Paul B. Rothman, dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine; and Kevin W. Sowers, president of the Johns Hopkins Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine, issued the following statement tonight following the death of Thomas V. Mike Miller, longtime president of the Maryland Senate: “All of us at Johns Hopkins University...

Dear members of the Johns Hopkins community, I watched with horror, as did so many of you, the tragic, sobering, and unfathomable scenes of violence that unfolded earlier today at the U.S. Capitol. In a day that should have been dedicated to the quintessence of our American experiment, the peaceful transfer of power from one elected leader to the next, a ritual solemnly observed through war, economic depressions, disease...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community, In 2013, we established the Hopkins Retrospective, a universitywide initiative to more deeply explore our history. Today, we write to provide you with an update on this work and to share some significant new information about our founder, Johns Hopkins. For most of the last century, our institutions believed Johns Hopkins to be an early and staunch abolitionist whose father...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: I write to you on the other side of a historic Election Day. While there is still much we don’t know as we wait for remaining states to certify results, it is beyond doubt that participation—especially by younger and first-time voters—reached levels not seen in decades. That so many Americans exercised their franchise in the throes of a deadly pandemic attests to the intensity and...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: We write today to share news about our spring semester. With a mix of cautious optimism, careful preparation, and strong desire to convene on our campuses, we are planning to resume in-person, on-campus academic and residential offerings this spring to the greatest extent possible. Our plans are shaped by your tremendous efforts to date to carry out our education, research, and clinical...