Wendy Osefo gave a Black Heritage Celebratory Keynote Address on Wednesday in Charles Commons. Osefo is a Nigerian-American political commentator, television personality and assistant professor at the School of Education. Additionally, she founded The 1954 Equity Project, LLC which is a community-building project that serves underrepresented minority students in higher education.
Last Friday Hopkins affiliates and Baltimore residents traveled to Annapolis to testify both for and against legislation that would allow Hopkins to create a private police force.
Daniel Aldana Cohen, an associate professor of Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, discussed the intersection of climate change and inequality at Red Emma’s on Wednesday. The talk, titled “A Green New Deal, from the Left,” focused on the potential impact of climate change on housing in the U.S.
Christian J. Koot, chair of the history department at Towson University, gave a presentation on his newly released book, A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake on February 27. He spoke at the George Peabody Library, where August Herrman’s map is on display as part of an exhibition titled “Maryland, from the Willard Hackerman Map Collection.”
Student Government Association (SGA) members signed a letter to the Homewood Academic Council at their weekly meeting on Tuesday. The letter demanded the revocation of Anthropology Professor Juan Obarrio’s tenure following Obarrio being accused of sexually assaulting a visiting graduate student in May.
Teaching for Change’s Alison Kysia led a discussion titled “The Story of Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf” on Monday. Teaching for Change is a D.C. nonprofit organization promoting social justice initiatives through educational outreach in schools. The event featured a partial screening of By the Dawn’s Early Light: Chris Jackson’s Journey to Islam, followed by an interactive conversation about black and Islamic representation in media. The Johns Hopkins University Muslim Association (JHUMA), the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Department of Islamic Studies co-hosted the event.
Within the last week, the University has launched a social media advertising campaign promoting its proposed private police force on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. These ads have also been featured on Google.
Johns Hopkins University and Health System wields significant economic power in Baltimore. As of 2014, it holds property in the city worth almost $50 billion, employs tens of thousands of local residents and has paid about $10 million to the city in payments in lieu of taxes since 2010. Yet with 22.1 percent of Baltimore residents living in poverty, many people have scrutinized the disparity between the University’s wealth and the economic hardship experienced in the neighborhoods around many of its campuses.
Patricia Ann Straat, Class of 1964, discussed her newly-released memoir, To Mars With Love, on Monday. The book is an account of her career in space exploration sciences.
Saidiya Hartman, writer and professor of African-American literature at Columbia University, discussed her novel, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, at Red Emma’s last Sunday. Hartman has written similar novels addressing the African diaspora, such as Lose Your Mother and Scenes of Subjection.
Poet Solmaz Sharif spoke about the roles and responsibilities of modern-day political poets as a part of the Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) on Monday, Feb. 25. Sharif, a Turkish-born Iranian-American writer and lecturer at Stanford, read from her book Look. The collection of poems details the repercussions of war and exile. The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute co-sponsored Monday’s event.
The Department of Comparative Thought and Literature hosted its biannual graduate student conference titled “Ways of Reading: Beyond, Beneath, and Beside Theory” on Friday and Saturday. The conference explored various methods of reading literary texts and featured speakers from universities across the country.
Student Leadership and Involvement hosted the 143rd annual Commemoration Ball at R. House in Remington on Friday. The event provided students with food and dancing to celebrate the University’s 143rd birthday.
The Student Government Association (SGA) hosted their first Mental Health Summit on Saturday, featuring keynote speaker Charles Xavier Kilborn. Kilborn is a local motivational speaker, spoken word poet and transgender advocate. He discussed his personal experience with depression and how students in similar situations could work to overcome mental illness.
The Student Government Association (SGA) voted to remove Executive President Noh Mebrahtu from office at their weekly meeting on Tuesday. The three-hour-long impeachment hearing was closed to the student body in accordance with SGA’s constitution.
Over 100 University faculty members have signed an open letter in opposition to Senate Bill (SB) 793 and House Bill (HB) 1094, which would allow Hopkins to create its own private police force. As of Feb. 20, 104 faculty had signed the letter.
Sarah Warren, the executive director of the Office of the Whole Child Services and Supports in Baltimore, gave a guest lecture during a class titled Health and Wellbeing in Baltimore: A Public Health Perspective. Warren discussed the importance of taking a holistic approach to improving student outcomes in Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS).
The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) opened its first event of the semester with Erlendy Cuero Bravo, a Colombian human rights activist who focuses on the plights of Afro-Colombians, on Monday. Cuero Bravo is the recipient of this year’s Anne Smedinghoff Award, named for a Hopkins alumna, former FAS executive direcotr and diplomat who was killed in Afghanistan.
Tressie McMillan Cottom, a sociologist and assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, talked about her new memoir Thick, a collection of essays on politics, culture and life as a black woman, at Red Emma’s on Tuesday. Cottom has appeared on The Daily Show and the Still Processing podcast. Her writing has been published in The Atlantic and The New York Times.
LGBTQ Life and the Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance (DSAGA) held a dinner to celebrate their second Show Your Love visibility campaign on Valentine’s Day.
