Sesquicentennial kickoff celebration

Remarks as prepared

Good evening!

Tonight, we gather to observe a momentous occasion.

The 150th anniversary of Johns Hopkins University, America’s first research university—launched by our founder, Johns Hopkins, with what was, at the time, the largest single act of philanthropy ever made.

At its founding, Johns Hopkins University birthed in our nation a new form of higher education that has since become the standard around the world.

And it began here, in Baltimore, in 1876.

One hundred years after the birth of our nation itself, our founders aspired to build nothing less than an entirely new university … “an American university,” that, according to our first President Daniel Coit Gilman, would be “based on and applied to the existing institutions of this country.”

It would be the first institution of higher education in America to unite education and research …

the first to establish the seminar to encourage thoughtful discussion and rigorous debate …

the first to build cutting-edge university laboratories and open their doors to students.

And it would be the first to insist that the knowledge it created was to be shaped by public need and shared as a public good.

It was an audacious, even radical, idea.

And like any great experiment, it was not a sure thing.

You see, our young leaders—Gilman and our original trustees—faced a profoundly fraught moment.

Theirs was an American era of tremendous uncertainty.

The Civil War had been resolved barely a decade earlier.

Its embers still smoldered; its conflict barely staunched.

The future of the young nation—and of the city perched on its faultline—hung in the balance
of a peace still precarious, a population still divided, an American experiment still very experimental indeed.

Yet their hopes for their nascent university were undaunted and undimmed.

Their vision gave no quarter to fear; it drew from the living wellspring of a profound faith in the power of ideas, truth, and knowledge.

And it did not model itself on what was, but on what could be.

This optimistic undertaking, a bold reflection of the best of the American spirit of possibility,
dared to imagine an institution with the capacity to help the country heal, thrive, and innovate.

Our first leaders imagined an institution profoundly dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the foundational role of facts and rationality in creating a good society and a great nation.

They imagined an institution of unprecedented scope and innovation, enshrining excellence and merit at its heart
in the spirit of the American experiment of which they were truly a part.

And despite the challenges and the uncertainties they faced, they dared to begin building that institution. With the visionary support of early stalwarts like the Keysers, the Wymans, the Careys, and the Hopkinses, the university they imagined took root.

Over its 150 years, Johns Hopkins people have faced head on once-incurable diseases, performed unthinkable feats of innovation and discovery, and worked hand in hand with the American federal government to build American health, prosperity, and global leadership.

Over its 150 years, Johns Hopkins’ people have, time and again, made the impossible possible.

We were the first to discover the incredible impact of Vitamin A supplements in reducing childhood blindness and mortality from diseases like measles and malaria.

We have played leading roles in eradicating smallpox and reducing cancer deaths by 33%.

We sent New Horizons, the fastest human-made object ever launched from Earth into deep space, to study Pluto.

And we have launched more than 120 startups here in Baltimore and distributed 20,000 pairs of free eyeglasses to Baltimore’s public school children so they can now see in class.

This is your university.

We have done all this in the 150 years since our visionary founding through decades of peace and prosperity,
and in moments in which our future was genuinely uncertain.

We have weathered challenges from the plummeting price of the B&O railway stock that suddenly reduced the value of our founder’s original $7 million bequest to the McCarthy era and the Red Scare to two world wars and two global pandemics.

Yet time and time again, this institution has met its challenges—the nation’s challenges—in the venturesome spirit of our founding.

So tonight, as we reflect on and celebrate these 150 extraordinary years, let us once again renew our commitment to that venturesome spirit of our great beginning.

Let us double and redouble our commitment to the core mission that has animated this institution:
to seek truth rigorously, to innovate adventurously, and to create knowledge and discovery for the benefit of the world.

Together, let us dream audaciously.

Let us act boldly.

And this above all: let our visions of the future be guided not only by what has been, but what could be.

Thank you all for everything that you have done and will do for Johns Hopkins and for all those to whom we owe our great service.

I cannot wait to see what firsts come next.