February 2, 2006

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:

I have exciting news. A supporter of Johns Hopkins, who wishes to remain anonymous, has committed $100 million to The Johns Hopkins Campaign: Knowledge for the World.

This gift is breathtaking not only in size, but also in scope. It addresses a number of our most important priorities in education, research and patient care. It benefits the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Our benefactor knows what our teachers do for students, what our doctors do for patients and what our researchers do for humanity, and has chosen to support our work in all three arenas. This incredible generosity will have a very, very significant impact for many decades to come.

This gift will assist with the construction of a new children's tower at Johns Hopkins Hospital and with renovation of Gilman Hall, the center for humanities teaching and scholarship in the Krieger School at Homewood. It also will support critical stem cell research at the School of Medicine and a number of initiatives at Public Health.

I am profoundly grateful to our benefactor for this immense expression of confidence in your ability to put knowledge to work to do good in the world. I know you join me in that gratitude.

More good news: This gift lifts the Knowledge for the World campaign to $2.1 billion in total gifts and pledges. We have met and exceeded our $2 billion goal, nearly two years before the campaign's close at the end of 2007.

That is a wonderful accomplishment. But even though the overall goal has been met, we are by no means finished. We are still seeking essential funding for a number of patient care, research and education projects that are high priorities within the campaign.

We still have work to do, for instance, to fully pay for the children's hospital tower and a companion critical care tower; the Gilman Hall renovation; a computational sciences building and the Charles Commons project at Homewood; a building for the School of Nursing and the Berman Bioethics Institute; buildings on SAIS's Bologna and Nanjing campuses; and endowment for student aid and professorships.

Our many, many alumni and friends have been extraordinary. So far, 170,000 of them have made gifts, large and small, to this campaign. They have our most fervent thanks.

We owe it to them, and to everyone on this planet who benefits from the work of Johns Hopkins, to continue the campaign. We owe it to them to ensure that we give our faculty, physicians, students and staff all the facilities and resources they need to truly make their mark on this world.

In that regard, we are taking the campaign on the road this spring. Between March and June, we will be visiting large groups of alumni and friends of Johns Hopkins in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Boston. A number of faculty will join us at these events, providing concrete examples of how Johns Hopkins is solving problems and making a difference everywhere from Baltimore to Bangladesh.

I look forward to bringing you more good news from the campaign as we continue on. In the meantime, thank you for all you do for Johns Hopkins.

More information about the anonymous gift is available at: http://www.jhu.edu/~gazette/2006/06feb06/06gift.html

Sincerely,

William R. Brody