News Release

Johns Hopkins today raised its "Knowledge for the World" campaign goal to $3.2 billion, saying that society faces formidable new challenges and more than ever needs what Hopkins produces: discoveries that make a difference.

"It's a different world from the one in which we launched this campaign more than six years ago," said William R. Brody, president of The Johns Hopkins University. "Transformations in society have created new problems for the planet. At the same time, dramatic new developments in the sciences, technology, the humanities and the arts provide new opportunities for enhancing the quality of human life.

"This bold new goal," he said, "represents our constant commitment at Johns Hopkins — an institution that has always been an engine for discovery — to go beyond discovery. We are committed also to building a better world, to applying the knowledge we generate here to benefit humankind."

Brody, speaking tonight at a dinner for more than 700 alumni and other benefactors of the university and Johns Hopkins Medicine, also said that the campaign will be extended through 2008. The $2 billion original goal of the campaign was eclipsed in December 2005, two years ahead of the original schedule.

"The campaign has been, by any measure, an outstanding success," Brody said in an e-mail message Saturday night to the Johns Hopkins community. "It would be easy to stop right there. To check off all the boxes, cross off the items on the 'to-do' list, declare 'job finished' and move on. It would be easy. But it would be a mistake."

Brody listed new worldwide problems, such as the global scale of health crises, the fundamentally changed nature of international conflict, and the implications of a global economy for both nations and individuals. He also pointed to the enormous potential of such rapidly emerging fields as computational biology, nanobiotechnology, brain science, genetic medicine, cell engineering and others.

"These changes," Brody said, "demand that we not take the easy way out. They mandate that we press on, that we redefine success. That we take every opportunity to put our knowledge to work for the good of the world and of humanity."

The Knowledge for the World Campaign to date has raised $2.3 billion from more than 184,000 donors, including more than $200 million for student financial aid and endowments for 61 new faculty chairs.

During the campaign, donors have, among other accomplishments:

established the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Johns Hopkins Malaria Institute, the Johns Hopkins Heart Institute, the Institute for Cell Engineering, and the Genetics and Public Policy Center.

supported a physical transformation of the Peabody Institute campus and construction of clinical and research buildings at Johns Hopkins Medicine, a new teaching building at the School of Medicine, and, at the Homewood campus, an admissions and visitors center, residence hall and computational science and engineering building.

created academic programs in Jewish studies, Africana studies, South Asia studies and real estate, and a Center on Politics and Foreign Relations.

backed research initiatives in population health, basic sciences, sudden cardiac death, micronutrients, measles, behavioral health, neuroscience, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, and US-Korea relations.

Of the $900 million remaining to be raised toward the new goal, the university and Johns Hopkins Medicine are seeking to raise $100 million for student financial aid, $150 million for facilities, $100 million for faculty support, $500 million for research support and academic programs and $50 million for unrestricted use. Overall, 36 percent of the new dollars sought will augment the endowments of the university and Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Some specific initiatives include:

funds to support the work of "young investigators," junior faculty who need to establish their research programs.

endowment support for the university's Baltimore Scholars Program, which provides free tuition for undergraduate study to graduates of the city's public schools.

endowment support for undergraduate scholarships in Arts and Sciences and Engineering, as well as additional undergraduate financial aid for students at the Peabody Conservatory.

graduate fellowship support to attract the very best graduate students.

funds to begin construction of a new facility for the School of Nursing and the Berman Bioethics Institute in East Baltimore, as well as an addition to the Eisenhower Library on the Homewood campus.

funds to begin a major renovation of the university's signature building, Gilman Hall, to house a comprehensive home for the humanities.

much-needed unrestricted support to allow the university's deans and directors to pursue immediate opportunities that develop every year.