From our colleagues at Teachers and Researchers United at Johns Hopkins University (TRU-UE Local 197):
Hopkins continues to ignore TRU’s demands while holding demonstrators under constant surveillance.
Coworkers, friends, comrades, and community, please join us in applying pressure on JHU to meet our demands by sending this email to the president, vice provost, and other administrators now!
Use the autofilled template here (opens email client): tinyurl.com/support-TRU-demonstration.
Or you can adapt the text of this email to send:
Send to: sabine@jhu.edu; laborrelations@jh.edu; president@jhu.edu; jomalle5@jh.edu; st.ours@jhu.edu; cdoyle28@jh.edu
BCC: trujhu@gmail.com
Subject: Meet TRU’s Demands – Demonstration in Gilman Hall
Dear Sabine, Vice Provost of Graduate Education,
I am writing to you as a [concerned TRU member/student/faculty member/staff member/community member]. I am dismayed to hear about Johns Hopkins’ illegal interference of the graduate worker union, Teachers and Researchers United (TRU), UE Local 197’s protected union activities, namely their financial commitment to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and the related targeting of individual union organizers in retaliation. TRU has given you multiple opportunities to end this illegal and unethical activity, and I am disappointed that the university’s only response has been to increase surveillance and police presence.
TRU is still open to discussing this matter with you; there is a group of people in Gilman Hall right now waiting for your response. I look forward to a prompt resolution that respects the union’s autonomy and the rights of union members to organize in their workplace. I also hope for an explanation as to why the university felt that an armed response was appropriate instead of a good-faith discussion about TRU’s reasonable expectation that JHU follows federal labor law and the CBA.
I support their demands and restate them here:
- End surveillance
- Immediately cease the monitoring of union members through video, audio, electronic surveillance, and the monitoring of bargaining unit members’ social media
- Delete all existing records on union members engaged in union activity and cease future surveillance
- Drop the cases
- The University must unconditionally drop retaliatory cases against individual organizers and cease all attempts to investigate and discipline individual organizers for the decisions of the collective.
- The University must recognize that the Union’s financial commitment to BDS is an internal union decision made by the popular will of its members and is outside of the jurisdiction of the University.
- Restrain JHU’s Investigatory Scope
- Allegations about discrimination as they pertain to union activity must be referred to Union leadership, not investigated by OIE, OSC, or any University office acting in retaliation towards protected Union activity.
- Financial transparency of the endowment
- The university’s financial commitments are opposed to ours, the people who do the research that affords the university its nonprofit status. As workers whose labor brings in millions of dollars for this university, we demand shared governance over the financial operations and investments of the institution.
- The University must publicly disclose where the $13B+ endowment is invested.
- The Union seeks a comprehensive financial report of all investments and financial holdings contained in the endowment as of 2026.
As an observer, it is truly shocking that the university responds to the valid concerns of its community with needlessly aggressive surveillance and intimidation. JHU now has the opportunity to respond and resolve this issue before further action must be taken by the union and the community. I strongly recommend that you take it.
Best,
[Name]