BALTIMORE — Sixteen months after making global headlines with an announcement that founder Johns Hopkins owned slaves, Johns Hopkins University has updated a biography of the 19th-century business tycoon on its website, revising the language in what a university official described as “minor edits” to the information about Hopkins’ relationship with slavery.
Prominent scholars who pushed back against the school’s 2020 announcement welcomed this week’s change, saying that while it was a step in the right direction, it didn’t go far enough.
The university said Wednesday that its “perspective and straightforward approach to presenting the evidence and ongoing research regarding our founder and slaveholding has not changed.”
