Messages

Dear Faculty, Students, and Staff: The start of the new academic year is a time of rejuvenation, and I enter every fall semester with the thrill of possibility. This year was no different. In fact, I saw that possibility in full flower late last week when I joined an extraordinary group of city and community leaders and Johns Hopkins’ neighbors and employees in Johnston Square Park. We were there to mark the expansion...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: Over the past several months, we have watched with growing concern the change in tenor of the national dialogue regarding the role of universities in supporting the open international exchange of ideas and people, while also preserving U.S. national security interests. Amid increased scrutiny by Congress and government agencies of research endeavors involving foreign-born faculty...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: I am delighted to inform you that late yesterday the university’s trustees approved the acquisition of the Newseum building located on Pennsylvania Avenue in the heart of the nation’s capital. This award-winning building—just steps from Congress, the White House, and the National Mall—will be renovated to house the university’s current activities in Washington. When...

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community: When we gather with family or friends to celebrate Thanksgiving later this week, many of us will begin the holiday meal by expressing our gratitude for the blessings we have received. Today, we are grateful and humbled for one more, extraordinary blessing. Michael R. Bloomberg, graduate of the Class of 1964 and former chair of our board of trustees, has made a gift to us that...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community: Earlier today, we were thrilled to join members of the Henrietta Lacks family in announcing the Johns Hopkins University’s plans to construct and name a new building on the medical campus in East Baltimore in honor of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks, through her life and her immortal cell line, had an immeasurable impact on medical science, touched countless lives around the world...

Dear Faculty, Students, and Staff: Over the last several years we have been working together to make our university a more equitable place to learn, work, and live—one that is free from discrimination and harassment and fully inclusive of the broadest possible range of people, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We know that this rich diversity is essential to our mission and to the excellence we strive...

Dear Students, When I first came to Johns Hopkins, Ralph O’Connor, a sage trustee and namesake of the O’Connor Recreation Center, gave me some good advice: “Don’t just sit in your office and get stuck behind that desk. Get out and walk the campus.” And every time I’d see Ralph, he’d ask: “Have you walked today? Where’d you go? Who’d you see?” Last...

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff: In our home, Labor Day weekend has always been suffused with ritual. When our children were young, Joanne and I scurried to get them ready for school. The frenzied rush to the mall to purchase clothing and school supplies. The binge of summer reading assignments somehow left to the last minute. A family barbecue on the back porch, made slightly bittersweet by Canada’s early autumn...

Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff: Yesterday the Trump administration announced its decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program and remitted to Congress the task of crafting a legislative response to the plight of the “Dreamers”—the hundreds of thousands of undocumented young people who were brought to the United States as children. Over the past seven years, Johns Hopkins...

Dear Johns Hopkins Community, Last Friday I watched and read the news of President Trump’s executive order on immigration as it unfolded not only in the media, at airports, and on city streets, but also in the emails, questions, and urgent requests for help that came in from members of the Johns Hopkins community. In the hours and days that followed, Johns Hopkins, like many others, sought to understand the substance...