Friends,
As long as I have been in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University has been opposed by the peace and justice community for its weapons contracts. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in a 2019 report labelled JHU as the #1 School of Mass Destruction. Then the Hopkins Justice Collective exposed the university as being complicit with genocide. Recently the university sent out a memo urging students to cooperate with ICE on campus—inform Trump’s agents where students being sought are located. And now we read that President Ron Daniels, echoing Trump, is working to make JHU a MAGA educational hub. The American Enterprise Institute, its new ally, is a right-wing think tank that ignores the scientific evidence regarding Climate Chaos. As we prepare for the 41st commemoration of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you can be sure that JHU will be challenged at our events. Kagiso, Max
Conservatives want to reform higher education. Johns Hopkins is
helping.
5/30/2025 5:30 a.m. EDT
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(Yifan Luo for The Baltimore
Banner)
A new
partnership aims to bring more political balance to the faculty
Conservatives who want more influence in higher education have a
surprising new ally: the president of an elite university.
Ron Daniels, president of the Johns Hopkins University, has invested
more than a year into a collaboration with the American Enterprise Institute, a
right-leaning think tank, to recruit conservative voices into academia. So far,
the collaboration has produced a two-day conference in Washington, D.C.; a
fellowship exchange for research and teaching collaboration; and a program to
recruit and support conservative graduates in careers in higher education.
The venture
comes amid growing tensions between colleges and the American right. President
Donald Trump’s administration has stripped universities of billions in federal
funding for research (Hopkins itself is facing hundreds of millions in losses), pondered changing accreditation
systems and favors raising the endowment tax.
The
institute does not endorse political candidates and has occasionally criticized the Trump administration. But the
administration has hired former institute employees, and some of the
institute’s senior fellows have published articles criticizing financial aid, advocating for ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,
and cutting off federal funding for colleges.
Those positions are unusual in academia, which skews more left-leaning than most professions. Half of all professors who responded to one 2022 survey identified as liberal; just 26% identified as conservative.
“Throughout
my career, I have seen many brilliant conservative scholars flee the academy
for think tanks, where they feel their ideas will be more readily welcomed,”
Daniels wrote in his 2021 book, “What Universities Owe Democracy." ”This brain drain cannot be healthy for
the university."
Daniels’ book helped spur the collaboration, which was announced in April, said Jenna Silber Storey, a senior fellow at the institute.
“Johns Hopkins has been very willing,” she said. “This project has
strong institutional support.”
The partnership’s Graduate Student Intellectual Diversity
Initiative “aims to encourage conservative, libertarian and heterodox students
and graduates to consider a career in higher education.”
The initiative supports students through the job search process,
and leaders have already begun to work with department chairs and senior
faculty across the country, including those at Harvard and Princeton
universities, to recruit qualified students into doctoral programs.
The program
is focused on providing “intellectual mentorship” so students feel supported in
joining the academy, said Hahrie Han, director of
the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute at Hopkins.
“I’ve been pleased by the robust levels of enthusiasm and support
that we’re getting from faculty both at Hopkins and elsewhere,” she said.
“There’s a real appetite for these kinds of projects.”
Storey, of the institute, said universities have begun reaching
out to her about the programming.
“I’ve heard
from a lot of other universities since the collaboration has been announced,” she said. “They’re very interested in what we’re
doing.”
The partnership also formed JHU-AEI Fellowship Exchange Program,
an opportunity for scholars from the university and the think tank to work
together on research, teaching or other projects.
The exchange program was developed during a series of salon
dinners that Hopkins faculty had with institute scholars, and according to the
university, more than two-dozen faculty members have expressed interest in the
collaboration.
Hopkins is “really serious about finding creative ways that bring
about more viewpoint diversity,” Storey said.
Under Daniels’ leadership, Hopkins has made a number of other
pushes to add conservative voices to the university. Daniels created faculty
groups to help departments at the university recruit scholars with
“demonstrated interest and expertise in conservative theory and perspectives.”
These programs will help higher education with the “pursuit of
truth,” Han said.
“We know from decades of research that no matter who you are, we
all have cognitive biases,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important to have a
diversity of viewpoints.”
The long-term goal, she added, is that the programs disappear.
“It would be great if we didn’t have a program that specifically
is about trying to diversify the graduate student pipeline,” she said. “We want
a program that becomes so effective that it’s no longer necessary.”
ellie.wolfe@thebaltimorebanner.com
Ellie Wolfe reports on higher education at the Baltimore Banner. Raised in western Massachusetts and a proud graduate of Bates College, Ellie spent a year reporting on higher education at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson before moving to Baltimore.
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
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