A path toward diversity

This is the third in a series of articles highlighting Johns Hopkins University's goals articulated in the Ten by Twenty vision plan, 10 goals to be reached by the year 2020.

Johns Hopkins has been grappling with issues of diversity since its founding by an abolitionist ^[1], just 11 years after the end of the Civil War, in a city 30 miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line. While the university has made notable strides, they have been in fits and starts, and have often lacked long-range planning or mechanisms to track progress.

10x2020 Progress Report

An update on progress Johns Hopkins has made toward goals articulated by President Ronald J. Daniels

In fall 2015, as protests over issues of diversity and inclusion erupted at universities across the country, students at JHU, led by the Black Student Union, joined in solidarity and raised their concerns about diversity at Hopkins. By then the university had developed significant programs to foster diversity, but the students' protests highlighted the need to set out a clear, accountable way forward.

The resulting dialogue led to the creation of the JHU Roadmap on Diversity and Inclusion. The 86-page document was created to capture the university's priorities and ambitions related to diversity and to state in explicit and concrete terms the institution's commitments. Hundreds of members of the university community offered ideas, critiques, and feedback on a draft released in February 2016, and the board of trustees endorsed the final, revised version in October 2016.

The Roadmap provides a discussion of the university's principles, outlines numerous existing activities and programs, and highlights new initiatives. It explores diversity in the areas of faculty, students, staff, education, climate and community, and engaging with Baltimore. It pertains to all Johns Hopkins divisions and campuses, and it plays a role in holding the institution accountable by identifying objectives against which progress can be measured with surveys, data collection, periodic reports, and community discussions.

The creation of the JHU Roadmap on Diversity and Inclusion, which spells out specific plans for action, aligns with Goal No. 8 of the Ten by Twenty, to strengthen the institutional, budgetary, technological, and policy frameworks necessary to set priorities, allocate resources, and realize the highest standards of academic excellence.

[1] Previously adopted accounts portray Johns Hopkins as an early abolitionist whose father had freed the family's enslaved people in the early 1800s, but recently discovered records offer strong evidence that Johns Hopkins held enslaved people in his home until at least the mid-1800s. Additional information about the university's investigation of this history is available on the Hopkins Retrospective website.