Messages

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...

Dear Johns Hopkins Faculty, Students, and Staff: It has been a long and nerve-wracking month since we began to fully prepare for, and mitigate the impact of, the extraordinary challenges posed by COVID-19. Our colleagues from the Bloomberg School of Public Health remind us that we are still likely a few weeks from the peak of the pandemic in Maryland. For the foreseeable future, we will remain under significant strain...

Dear Students of the great Class of 2020, In light of the recent guidance from public health authorities and our own experts about the prolonged and unpredictable nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, Johns Hopkins has made the difficult decision not to hold universitywide and divisional Commencements in-person this year and will instead host a virtual ceremony on May 21. We know that you have looked forward to Commencement...

Dear Johns Hopkins Students, Faculty, and Staff: The rapidly evolving nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has called upon Johns Hopkins—and each of you—to take a series of unprecedented steps to safeguard our community and ensure that we can accomplish our mission to care for those we serve, including the most vulnerable among us. Today, we have arrived at another critical juncture in our response, and we have made...