Messages

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: In this moment of national reckoning with racist violence and structural racism it is clear that as individuals, as a university, and as a society, we are faced with both an imperative and an opportunity to act. Sadly, that pain and impact reverberated again this week when a racist symbol was found on a construction site in an off-campus lab facility and Johns Hopkins unequivocally and in...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: I am anguished to be writing you with some very distressing news. Yesterday, a rope tied into a noose was found in a construction site of a Whiting School of Engineering lab in an off-campus facility, the Stieff Silver building near the Homewood campus. We have referred the incident to federal law enforcement as a potential hate crime, and we are conducting our own investigation as well...

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community: We are pleased to share today our plans for the undergraduate experience at JHU this fall. After extensive consultation with our faculty public health and medical experts, and input from faculty, students, and staff, we have determined that we will be able to resume in-person activities for our undergraduates but that we will also provide maximum flexibility for those...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: The past several weeks have shown starkly the toll and trauma of racism. We understand that it is incumbent upon us not only to listen and support our Black and Brown colleagues but to take actions that embody our belief that their flourishing at Johns Hopkins truly matters. In the coming days, we will share more about a framework for determining together the steps we can take to combat racial...

Dear Johns Hopkins Students and Families: We continue to plan for the next academic year, one that will be different from any of the previous 144 at Johns Hopkins. We are committed to doing our best to resume a spectrum of education, research, and student-life activities this fall to the greatest extent possible—with scrupulous regard to sound public health and medical advice—and to ensuring that you have a rewarding...

Dear Faculty, Students, Staff, and Neighbors of Johns Hopkins: As hundreds of thousands rise in protest here and across the nation, we share the continued anguish and anger at the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and the unjust loss of so many other Black lives, in the long and grotesque history of structural racism that has shaped this nation and its institutions. This moment of national reckoning implicates...

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community: In the weeks since we wrote regarding the university’s planning process in the face of COVID-19, our community has witnessed and experienced the extraordinary pain caused by racial injustice and violence, borne especially by our Black students, faculty, and staff, against the continued backdrop of a global pandemic that has taken far too many lives and disrupted so...

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community, In the past three months, across the U.S. and around the globe, we have experienced extraordinary challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In communities of which Johns Hopkins is a part—from Baltimore City, Washington, D.C., Prince George’s, Howard and Montgomery Counties to St. Petersburg, Florida, and many more—we have witnessed our African American, Latinx...

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community: We write today to update you on our preparations for the gradual resumption of Johns Hopkins’ in-person activities as we face together the ongoing challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. No final decisions have been made at this time, and the health and safety of our community will remain paramount as we embark on a consultative process to consider our next steps. But we have...

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community: In recent weeks, I have written to share updates with our community and to express my profound gratitude for your extraordinary response to COVID-19. I continue to be awestruck by our university’s remarkable resourcefulness and resilience, its decency and aspiration, its humanity and excellence. As we look across the vast expanse of Johns Hopkins—in health care...