Announcements

To the Penn community,Throughout this year, Penn has marked the 250th anniversary of American independence with vibrant academic engagement and exhibitions. Now, as July 4th approaches, we have a unique opportunity both to celebrate our history and reaffirm a shared responsibility: to shape a bright future that advances our nation’s founding ideals.

Ramanan Raghavendran, Chair, Board of Trustees, thanked President Jameson for his extraordinary accomplishments over the past two-and-a-half years, and announced that in the fall, Penn will begin the comprehensive process laid out in Penn’s Statutes to identify the University’s next President, who will take office on July 1, 2027. 

President J. Larry Jameson will conclude his service as President of the University of Pennsylvania as planned on June 30, 2027. In a message to the Penn community, President Jameson highlights his experiences leading Penn and his commitment to achieving important goals in the coming year, including advancing the work of Penn Forward. 

We are writing to follow up on the budget planning process announced in January, which asked Schools and Centers to build on existing cost-containment measures and develop plans to further reduce expenditures. We are grateful for the care, thoughtfulness, and collaboration that went into this work across the University.

To the University Community:With Penn Forward, we asked our community to think ambitiously and practically about how Penn can evolve for continued excellence—in the near term, through the next decade, and beyond. I am pleased to provide an update on our progress and the actions we are taking to build momentum.

This evening, the Penn community will come together for Take Back the Night. Held each spring during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, this event reaffirms an enduring principle: everyone has the right to be safe, respected, and heard.

We remain committed to confronting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and have taken multiple steps to prevent and address these despicable events. While we acknowledge the important role of the EEOC to investigate discrimination, we also have an obligation to protect the rights of our employees. We continue to believe that requiring Penn to create lists of Jewish faculty and staff, and to provide personal contact information, raises serious privacy and First Amendment concerns. The University does not maintain employee lists by religion. We intend to appeal.

After reviewing more than 61,000 applications, today we are delighted to welcome our newest group of Quakers admitted through Regular Decision.Every year, we have the privilege of getting to know an extraordinary range of students through the stories they share with us. And every year we’re reminded that a Penn class is shaped not only by achievement, but also by the perspectives, curiosity, and sense of purpose students bring to our community.

Penn’s commitment to open expression is a bedrock principle of our campus community and central to our institutional mission.

As our nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I have been reflecting on its profound opening words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Our history reminds us that the promise of those words has not always been fully realized. For many, the starting line is set back and the path forward is uphill.