Celebrate the TPNW & sign the letter to JHU president

Friends,

We will gather at 4:30 PM at 33rd & North Charles Street in Baltimore on Thursday, January 22.  Join us if you can, and consider signing on to the letter to President Ron Daniels.  Kagiso, Max

January 22, 2026

Ronald J. Daniels  

President, Johns Hopkins University

242 Garland Hall

3400 N. Charles St.

Baltimore, MD 21218

(410) 516-8068 or president@jhu.edu

Dear President Daniels:

The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), composed of hundreds of organizations, teamed up with the governments of many of the world’s non-nuclear nations to host a series of UN Conferences focused on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. In March 2017 negotiations for a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons began. In July, the delegates adopted a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) by a vote of 122 in favor, 1 opposed, and 1 abstention. Eventually, fifty states ratified the Treaty and it entered into force on January 22, 2021, prohibiting the development, acquisition, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons for those countries that have ratified it. 

We are gathering on January 22, 2026 to celebrate this historic treaty. For more than forty years now, Maryland anti-nuke and anti-war organizations have called on Johns Hopkins University to end all military research projects.  In 2019, ICAN issued a report  “Schools of Mass Destruction: American Universities in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex” that details the ways in which roughly 50 American colleges and universities are supplying the scientific, technical and human capital necessary to maintain and expand U.S. weapons of mass destruction. Johns Hopkins University had the dubious distinction of being #1.  And today, your university remains #1.

We are calling on you, as the president of a prestigious university, to contact the White House to welcome the Treaty and to affirm a plan to reduce the United States nuclear arsenal with the ultimate intention of the elimination of all US nuclear weapons.  Your call on the US government would be a positive step towards negotiation of a comprehensive agreement on the achievement and permanent maintenance of a world free of nuclear weapons.  You may have some influence on President Trump to convince him to eliminate the budget for the nuclear arsenal and use the proceeds instead for social services programs.

This information was provided by a JHU student researcher: “APL plays a central role in maintaining US nuclear capabilities under the umbrella of missions it dubs "strategic deterrence." As it has since the 1950s, APL remains heavily involved in providing research and engineering tasks for the Navy's fleet of nuclear capable submarines which remains important for preserving the US military's "second strike" capabilities. They are currently operating under a contract with the Navy initiated in 2022 which is estimated to total around $10.6 billion by 2027 of which spending on naval missile systems is included.

“APL also entered a contract to perform research and engineering tasks for the Air Force's Sentinel ICBM program in 2023. The system is being built by Northrop Grumman to replace the Minuteman III nuclear arsenal and is estimated to cost $141 billion to build, 81% greater than initial estimates.”

    This article by the Hopkins Justice Collective appeared in the JHU Newsletter on February 6, 2025--Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory researches efficient forms of genocide. The article closed with this Observation: “The ethical and moral objection to the APL goes far beyond the physical weapons systems it manufactures. As a division, the APL’s very existence incentivizes and validates the creation of science for war, and even genocide. The Laboratory’s underlying ideology, grounded in the priorities of the security state, is pervasive. Why else would its climate research exist only under the umbrella of ‘Climate Security,’ with impact areas focused on ‘how climate pressures may impact future missions’ and maintaining a ‘climate-ready force’? Rather than scale down the US military, which has historically been one of the largest culprits of global emissions accelerating climate change, the APL works to adapt them to the very damage that they have facilitated.”

 We would appreciate if a small delegation could meet with you to assist you in the process of disinvesting from  weapons research.  Your university is complicit in the threat posed by nuclear weapons.  And JHU’s research is contributing to the environmental crisis.  We can imagine the praise and prestige the university would receive if you renounced weapons research. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore , MD 21212

Janice Sevre-Duszynska, Baltimore Nonviolence Center

Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.  Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs