Building Redress into a Comprehensive Narrative at Johns Hopkins University

In the past few years, faculty and staff at Johns Hopkins University have launched numerous forms of historical self-examination on campus. These include, among others, the Hard Histories project, the Inheritance Baltimore initiative, and the Hopkins Retrospective program in the university’s various archives. At the same time, Hopkins has also commissioned an institutional history that will appear in conjunction with the university’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2026. How should the findings and sensibilities of these other projects find expression in a wide-ranging account of the university’s past? How can acknowledging an institution’s prior shortcomings in an authorized history help it, and higher education more generally, move toward a more equitable future? How can historians of higher education speak effectively to readers, such as alumni, who expect a thoroughly celebratory approach? Andrew Jewett, the lead author of the Hopkins institutional history, will discuss the challenges and opportunities for weaving considerations of redress and reparation into a comprehensive, archivally grounded, ethically sensitive account of a leading university’s many accomplishments and failures over a century and a half.