On Monday, April 21 the University announced a series of initiatives aimed at enhancing intellectual diversity across its community and curriculum in partnership with center-right think tank the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Hopkins faculty have been collaborating with AEI to organize a two-day symposium titled “Civic Thought and Practice: The Intellectual Foundations of Citizenship.” The event seeks to explore how universities can educate students to embrace a variety of ideological perspectives. Participants will include Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Dean Christopher Celenza, Associate Director at the Center for Economy and Society Simon Halliday, Vice Dean for Humanities Dean Moyar, and SNF Agora professors Amy Binder and Andrew Perrin, as well as scholars from over 50 universities nationwide. In an email to The News-Letter, Perrin described the University’s rationale in hosting the symposium: creating an orderly plan to develop a cohesive intellectual framework around diverse civic education.
“There are lots of ideas out there for how to do it, but they're disorganized, poorly studied, and not coordinated. I'd love to see the group develop curricula and activities that include humanistic, social scientific, and communication training as well as ways to measure the outcomes so we know if these efforts are working,” Perrin wrote.
In an email to The News-Letter, Binder also shared her expectation of disagreement during the symposium, still emphasizing the end goal of productively developing university curricula.
“The discussions will not be without disagreement: Should Civic Thought be its own discipline, or taught throughout the university? How can we measure whether citizenship education works? What are the outcomes we wish for? But each of the participants is committed to the idea that college must present opportunities to students not just to train for a career but to become engaged, informed, deep-thinking members of democratic society,” Binder wrote.
Students responded with mixed feelings about the University’s new partnerships with regard to student involvement. In an email to The News-Letter, Hopkins Democrats mentioned that their joint collaboration with the College Republicans at JHU to foster civil discussion in the Hopkins Political Union has been not formally acknowledged by the University.
“We have to rely on Hopkins Votes, SNF Agora, and the Heterodox Academy for support, as it is nearly impossible to garner the necessary funds and support from LEED,” College Democrats wrote. “We are not familiar with the American Enterprise Institute or these recent initiatives. We urge the university to do more to directly support student groups and civic engagement on campus. From our perspective, the AEI initiative seems performative, appealing more to the current political environment than actually encouraging civic engagement on campus.”
Some students involved in civic and political groups expressed frustration that the University’s new initiatives were implemented without meaningful consultation or support for existing student-led efforts. While the administration has emphasized its commitment to ideological diversity, several students view the partnership as disconnected from the ongoing work to foster cross-partisan dialogue on campus. This perceived lack of collaboration has led to concerns that the initiatives prioritize other institutional values.
Senior Alejandro Soto Franco echoed this skepticism in an interview with The News-Letter, raising concerns that the partnership reflects institutional self-interest rather than a genuine commitment to ideological inclusion.
“AEI is firmly pro-corporate and firmly pro-war, and these interests are entirely aligned with the funders of Hopkins— especially Exxon, Mobil, Koch Industries, Google. All the money gets funneled into the Applied Physics Laboratory,” Franco explained. “These [initiatives] now get framed as intellectual diversity, while true critiques of U.S. imperialism or socialis[t views] are excluded as radical. This is, for me, not a free exchange, but entirely a transactional marketplace where diversity becomes limited to ideas that justify the university's material base.”
Franco also acknowledged the importance of addressing conservative underrepresentation but criticized the University’s current method of handling this issue.
“I 100% agree that there is conservative underrepresentation at Hopkins, [...] but I don't think that just partnering with AEI [...] is going to do anything about fixing that conservative underrepresentation, aside from just bringing in people who are willing to write dissertations and attend talks,” Franco stated. “I think that what we should be doing is just exposing students to fiscally or socially conservative ideas in first year classes, or in Democracy Day presentations, where they receive an honest and thorough breakdown of conservative ideology.”
In an email to The News-Letter, College Republicans commended the initiative as a “step in the right direction,” while voicing caution about the University’s approach in bolstering intellectual diversity — they emphasized the need for tangible results.
“Our biggest concern is that the University's partnership with AEI does not extend to the material and academic experience of students,” College Republicans wrote. “The partnership's success will ultimately be judged not by rhetoric or statements, but rather by measurable outcomes, including curricular reforms, job postings, faculty hires, and student engagement.”
As part of this broader initiative to boost intellectual diversity, Hopkins and AEI are launching the JHU-AEI Fellowship Exchange Program, a grant-funded initiative supporting collaborative research and academic projects. The program aims to bring visiting fellows to campus to contribute to undergraduate courses, develop joint research projects and host events that explore a range of ideological perspectives.
In his email to The News-Letter, Perrin highlighted the importance of expanding research opportunities for students of different ideological backgrounds.
“The evidence is strong that most faculty who teach in areas with political and social content already bring diverse perspectives, including conservative ones, into their teaching. The bigger issue is research, and I hope the fellowship program will provide some tools for expanding the research horizons,” he wrote.
These programs stem from a 2023 AEI event featuring President Ronald J. Daniels, where he discussed themes from his book What Universities Owe Democracy. At the event, Daniels addressed the trend of conservative intellectuals gravitating toward think tanks rather than academia, specifically within the social sciences and humanities.
"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. This brain drain cannot be healthy for the university. If the professoriate continues to congregate on the political left, it shortchanges conservative and liberal students alike," Daniels stated at the event.
Despite their initial reservations regarding the initiative’s influence in the academic realm, College Republicans praised the University’s acknowledgement of this intellectual imbalance in their email to The News-Letter.
“Many of our students, especially in the Political Science, History, and English departments, go through their entire undergraduate experience without encountering a single conservative professor,” they wrote. “This intellectual groupthink does a disservice not only to our University's founding mission but also to our graduates, who walk out without the ability to confront challenging ideas in the real world.”
In response, Hopkins has supported the recruitment of conservative scholars through the creation of a heterodox faculty cluster, enabling departments to hire experts with conservative viewpoints.
Howell, dean of the School of Government and Policy, also emphasized the school's commitment to fostering broad intellectual perspectives.
"The pursuit of truth and the vigorous interrogation of ideas crucially depends upon people from different worldviews, ideological orientations, disciplinary backgrounds, and epistemologies coming together in good faith and with open minds. Too often, surrounding ourselves with facsimiles of ourselves, our thinking grows lazy, our blind spots persist, and our imaginations run fallow,” Howell stated.
Beyond policy, faculty members continue to explore ways to foster dialogue between opposite viewpoints in their teaching. For example, Binder incorporates this philosophy into her sociology methods course, where students interview individuals with differing political views.
“This is a researcher’s version of having a dialogue, and it is, admittedly, one-sided since the person being interviewed takes up more of the space. But it’s a great way to lean into the habit of talking less and listening more,” Binder explained.
Other University programs include events discussing multiple perspectives on Middle Eastern conflicts, a grant program supporting faculty initiatives to bolster cross-perspective dialogue, programming plans in residence halls to foster dialogue skills and a partnership with Open to Debate, a nonprofit organization organizing debates between progressive and conservative voices on campus.
