After a seven-month search and over 300 candidates, the Board of Trustees elected University of Pennsylvania Provost Ronald Daniels as the 14th president of Johns Hopkins.
Daniels, who studied law at the University of Toronto and Yale University, will take over current President William Brody's position in March. For over nine years before his appointment at Penn in 2005, Daniels was the Dean of the University of Toronto's law school.
"Given the constellation of roles that research universities play and especially the role that this great university has and will continue to play, I want to register ... publicly, proudly, and without any equivocation my firm determination to devote every ounce of my passion and my energy to the bright and promising future that stretches before Johns Hopkins University," Daniels said at a press conference Tuesday.
Daniels repeatedly emphasized his respect for current president Brody's work, as well as his hope to live up to his high standard.
"For those of us outside Johns Hopkins, Bill Brody simply represents the gold standard for achievement in higher education. He is truly an inspired academic leader," Daniels said. "Under his tenure, as we have all seen, Johns Hopkins has flourished."
In March, Brody will move to La Jolla, Calif. and begin his new position as President of the Salk Institute.
The Presidential Search Committee was composed of students, faculty, administrators and Board of Trustees members. In total, they considered hundreds of potential candidates before narrowing the field to a small number of top choices, whom they interviewed in New York so the process would remain discreet.
"As a team, we had one goal: to find the best person for the job," Chair of the Board of Trustees and member of the Presidential Search Committee Pamela Flaherty said. "And we found him."
Although choosing a legal scholar may seem odd for a university that has no law school, Flaherty stressed that his specific field of study is not critical for the job of president. Rather, she cited his strengths as a "gifted leader, administrator and scholar," who "sets very high standards of excellence." She also noted that in his time at Penn, he gained experience overseeing "both undergraduate and graduate students in the arts [and] sciences," as well as "professional schools including medicine, engineering, business and others."
Once Daniels found out he was considered a serious candidate for the job, he traveled to Baltimore on a "stealth visit" to get to know the city and the University. He had to keep his visit a secret since the entire search process was highly confidential.
"As much as I knew about Hopkins, I had never been on the campus," he explained. "I made my way to Homewood, spent some time on the campus here and went to East Baltimore and walked through the Medical complex and the health science complex. Then after that, I, as any self-respecting Philadelphian would, went and got some crab cakes and came back home."
His family, he said, "is ready to swap cheese steaks for crab cakes."
Hopkins Provost Kristina Johnson, who will be working closely with Daniels, expressed her enthusiasm about his selection, saying that she had "admired his work from afar." She also stressed that his background in the social sciences and humanities will be a perfect complement to her background in the sciences.
"I think he's terrific. He has a great vision and a commitment to multi-disciplinary research," she said. "I look forward to learning a lot from him and his perspective on higher education. It's a terrific opportunity for me personally and for the University."
Since the Board of Trustees officially voted to appoint Daniels president-elect on Tuesday, he has not yet had time to fully orient himself with the University and was therefore hesitant to comment on any specific policies or programs he might implement or change.
"I think at this point, before I take office officially . . . it would be premature for me to start talking about specific priorities," he said. "But for me, the very clear priority that comes up at this point is to simply learn the institution. That way, I can be . . . much more credible in championing its priorities and championing its academic mission."
But even without specifics, reaction from University administrators has been largely positive, especially at Homewood.
"I am very, very pleased by the selection of Ron Daniels," Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Adam Falk wrote in an e-mail to the News-Letter. "It is clear that he has a deep appreciation for the unique and critical role of undergraduate and graduate education in the arts and sciences."
Dean of Undergraduate Education Paula Burger was also impressed by his work at Penn, especially with undergraduates.
"I can see him relating easily to undergraduates, and I feel confident that he will help advance the vision that we have for a distinctive Hopkins undergraduate education, both inside and outside the classroom," she wrote in an e-mail.
When asked if she had any concerns about the new president-elect, Burger said she had none, "Unless, it is that, since he is a lawyer, we may see an uptick in the interest our students have in considering law school. But, that might be a nice balance to our premeds!"
Kurt Herzer, the sole undergraduate member of the Search Committee, believes that Daniels will be a champion for undergraduatates. "It is my unequivocal belief that he will not only have undergraduate interests in mind but will make them central to his presidency," Herzer wrote in an e-mail to the News-Letter.
President Brody echoed these sentiments of Daniels: "He's very committed to undergraduate education."
Hopkins Student Government Association (SGA) President Sonny Chandrasekhar spoke to the president of Penn's SGA to get an idea of what he should expect from Daniels and was pleased with the response.
"He's really enthused about working with undergraduates and sees them as an integral part of the institution," Chandrasekhar said.
Chandrasekhar is pleased to have someone with a non-traditional background heading up the institution.
"I'm really excited to get some fresh opinions," he said.
Daniels's Background
Daniels was born in Toronto, Ontario to a family that quickly instilled the value of higher education in him, which would later become his passion.
Daniels's father, uncle and aunt were the first in his family to receive higher education.
"Education not only ensured their material comfort, but, just as important, it fulfilled the promise of equal opportunity in our society," he said. "I am one generation removed from that transformative experience, but I have never lost sight of the impact it has had on me and my family."
Daniels went on to receive his B.A. in Political Science and Economics from the University of Toronto in 1982, and he received his J.D. degree from The Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto in 1986. He also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Faculty of Law Review during his time there. He then went on to study at the Yale Law School, where he received his masters of law in 1988.
"It was just a little over two decades ago that I graduated from law school with truthfully the dimmest appreciation that I would make a lifelong commitment to the world of ideas," Daniels said. "The fact that I am standing here today says as much of my good fortune of having professors and later dear colleagues and friends who saw things in me that I could scarcely see in myself. And without their persistence, without their faith, I know that I would not have heeded my true calling."
He was appointed a professor of law at the University of Toronto in 1988 and became dean of the law school in 1995. During his time as dean, Daniels oversaw the doubling of the faculty and a huge cut in the student-to-faculty ratio: from 18-1 to 12-1. He also played a huge part in significantly increasing the endowment from just $1 million to $57 million over nine years.
He also started a program to teach law and justice at two inner-city high schools. During a speech to the Homewood Community on Tuesday, he mentioned his enthusiasm and respect for Hopkins's Baltimore Scholars Program, which encourages Baltimore Public Schools students to apply to Hopkins and provides accepted students with full tuition scholarships.
Additionally, Daniels was intimately involved in public policy in Toronto and Canada as a whole. He also founded and chaired Pro Bono Students Canada, which places over 2,000 law students each year with community-based organizations in Canada.
Daniels has also served short stints as a visiting professor, both at Cornell and Yale's schools of law.
In 2005, he was selected to be provost at Penn, where the deans of Penn's 12 schools reported to him on academic and budgetary matters.
"There's been no part of my job at Penn that I've enjoyed more than working with the medical school and health sciences complex," Daniels said. His experience there led him to a greater appreciation of the sciences and also sparked his interest in working with a medicine and science-focused institution.
"The opportunity to be part of an institution that has the world's leading medical school and health complex is something that was very exciting to me."
At Penn, Daniels served as provost under President Amy Gutmann, who launched a major program called the Penn Compact a few months before he came. Together, Gutmann and Daniels implemented a number of innovative programs under the umbrella of the Penn Compact.
For example, they began a financial aid program that eliminated loans for students receiving financial aid, replacing them with grants so these students would not be in debt at graduation. They also set a minimum stipend for Arts and Sciences doctoral students at $19,200, which is much higher than many at Hopkins.
When asked about the possibility of implementing a similar grant program at Hopkins, Daniels said, "The only thing I can say with clear confidence and self assurance is that access [for students with few financial resources] will be a very important priority."
Daniels is highly committed to inter-disciplinary learning, and in 2006, he implemented a new general education curriculum that required undergraduate students to complete two interdisciplinary courses: one that integrates the humanities and the social sciences and another that integrates math and sciences. This led to an entirely new program called the Arts and Sciences Visual Studies Program, which integrates philosophy, cognitive science, art history and psychology in the study of "seeing."
Daniels also helped develop the Penn World Scholars Program, which encouraged international students to attend the university. During his time at Penn, they also began extensive work with Botswana's government and the university there in their efforts to fight HIV and AIDS.
Additionally, academic courses relating to community service have grown 30 percent since 2004.
Within months of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Daniels organized a symposium in Washington, D.C. that brought together policy makers, scholars, and private and public sector leaders to come up with better strategies for saving lives and speeding recovery in the wake of a disaster.
In his personal research, Daniels focuses on economics, public policy and law, especially in areas like corporate and securities law, social and economic regulation and the role of law in legal institutions in promoting third world development. He has also written and edited a number of books and published dozens of articles. In addition to his position as president, Daniels will also hold an appointment in the Department of Political Science.
Family
Daniels's wife, Joanne Rosen, is a human rights attorney. She served as council to the Ontario Human Rights Commission in Toronto while Daniels was a professor and dean at the law school. She was also an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto law school. She is now a lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn, where she teaches courses on communications law and on the right to privacy. She is a 1982 honors graduate of York University in Toronto. She received a masters in psychology from the University of Toronto in 1983 and then attended law school there, earning her J.D. in 1986.
Daniels and his wife have four children. Their eldest daughter, Roberta, is 17 years old and is attending a boarding school.
His two sons, Ryan and Drew, are 16, and their youngest daughter, Alexandra, is 14.
The family will be moving into the Nichols House at Homewood, which Brody and his wife have occupied for the last 12 years.
