To the UMB Community:

With Thanksgiving week upon us, I wish you restorative time with family and friends and abundant reminders of all you have to be grateful for.

As a University community and as a city, we have faced challenges this year. We have seen starkly the struggle of those fighting for equality and opportunity, for health, happiness, and peace.

Through it all, these challenges have sparked conversations we might not have otherwise had—conversations about our role in restoring a city, about our commitment to inclusion, about holding ourselves accountable to our highest ideals, even when budgets are cut and resources stretched thin. It’s in these tough conversations—and even tougher work—that we find our strength and solidarity. It’s there we find the kindness, understanding, and compassion that bind us together.

This Thanksgiving, I’m deeply grateful to be among students and colleagues who question the way things are and offer a vision of what they could be, who embolden us as an institution and as individuals dedicated to one another and the communities we serve.

I wish you a very happy holiday. 

Sincerely,

Jay A. Perman, MD
President