Since 2024, the University has rolled out a series of initiatives aimed at broadening the range of academic and political perspectives represented among its faculty and students. The efforts promoting intellectual pluralism and backed by President Ronald J. Daniels have proved controversial among some faculty members. While prominent members of senior leadership and senior faculty have publicly embraced the efforts, some faculty at the department level are expressing disagreement, most visibly within the humanities and social sciences, where the Heterodox Academy found the largest ideological imbalance across university departments.
In September 2025, Lisa Siraganian, a professor of Comparative Thought and Literature and president of the Hopkins chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), published an essay in the AAUP magazine, Academe, titled “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity.” Framed as a sweeping indictment of the growing academic movement and institutional push for intellectual pluralism, Siraganian argued that “viewpoint diversity” (which Siraganian treated as interchangeable with the university’s preferred phrase, “intellectual pluralism”) was a partisan project that is incoherent in principle, ill-motivated and a threat to academia.
“Viewpoint diversity is anathema to academic freedom,” Siraganian wrote. “Rejecting intellectually unsuitable ideas is what specialized knowledge and the autonomy of academic reasoning, and thus academic freedom, are all about.”
Singling out Hopkins by name, Siraganian criticized the University’s collaboration with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a center-right think tank, calling it an unscholarly attempt to import conservative ideas based on political provenance rather than academic merit.
“All of these civic thought endeavors are creations of wealthy donors, politicians, and conservative think tanks,” Siraganian wrote.
Invoking examples of the discarded triple helix theory of DNA’s structure and hypothetical QAnon hires, Siraganian concluded that the pursuit of viewpoint diversity would only promote more “bad ideas.”
Siraganian’s opposition is not isolated among her colleagues, said Richard Essam, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the University Writing Program and co-chair of the University’s chapter of the Heterodox Academy. This fall, Essam is teaching a SOUL course titled “Intellectual Pluralism at Hopkins.”
“Some departments and programs are implicitly hostile to viewpoint diversity as evidenced by hiring decisions, invited speakers, and much curricular content . . . they don’t register the lack of viewpoint diversity as a problem,” Essam said.
Siraganian joined two other Hopkins faculty members for a panel critical of viewpoint diversity and the university’s partnership with AEI in March 2026. Titled “Johns Hopkins, AEI, and ‘Viewpoint Diversity’: What Universities Owe to the Truth,” the event, co-sponsored by the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism, featured Siraganian alongside History professor Nathan Connolly and environmental health scholar Ana María Rule. Graduate students April Ma and Sonia Dhawan, leaders in the University’s graduate student and worker union, TRU-UE 197, moderated the discussion.
Siraganian’s essay comes in the wake of a slate of programs the university has organized with AEI to invite conservative, libertarian and other heterodox scholars, students and perspectives to a campus where liberal and moderate students outnumber conservative students by roughly 11 to 1, according to a 2023 survey conducted by the SNF Agora Institute.
In March 2025, Hopkins launched the JHU-AEI Fellowship Exchange Program, a grant-funded initiative aimed at strengthening ties between the University and the think tank sector. In its first two cycles, the fellowship produced 15 collaborative research and teaching projects co-led by Hopkins faculty and AEI scholars.
One such project was a semester-long course last spring called “Liberal Education: A Contested Question.” Co-taught by the Chair of the Political Science Department, Robbie Shilliam, and AEI senior fellow Benjamin Storey, the course drew on a range of texts by authors such as Plato, Cicero, Edward Said and Audre Lorde. Students also visited the AEI headquarters in D.C. and the Hopkins Bloomberg Center and had sit-down conversations with President Ron Daniels and the inaugural dean of the School of Government and Policy, Dean Howell, on their visions for intellectual pluralism in higher education.
In April 2025, Hopkins and AEI launched the Graduate Student Intellectual Diversity Initiative (GSIDI) to encourage conservative, libertarian, and heterodox liberal students to pursue careers in academia and address what the University calls its “intellectual diversity problem.” In May 2025, the two institutions also convened scholars and administrators from more than 50 universities at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center for a conference on “Civic Thought and Practice.” The gathering grew out of the JHU-AEI Civic Thought Project, a working group whose members include Dean Chris Celenza, Vice Dean for Humanities Dean Moyar and then-SNF Agora Director Hahrie Han.
Recent hirings also show the University working to bring faculty with different viewpoints into its ranks, primarily through the new School of Government and Policy. Hopkins recruited William Howell from the University of Chicago in 2024 to serve as the school’s inaugural dean, and Howell has made intellectual pluralism a stated priority.
In January 2026, Hopkins recruited economist Peter Arcidiacono from Duke as vice dean for faculty affairs (a role that includes oversight of hiring decisions) and a professor of economics for the School of Government and Policy. A labor economist known for his work on higher education, Arcidiacono served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard. Also recruited from Duke is John Rose, a Christian theologian who taught civil discourse at both Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Civic Life and Leadership. Rose joined the University as a senior fellow in Fall 2026 and currently teaches a first-year seminar titled “How to Think in an Age of Political Polarization.” Rose said his appointment itself reflects the school’s commitment to its stated pluralism goal.
“I see it as a strong sign of Hopkins’ commitment to intellectual pluralism that I was made a Senior Fellow for this year,” Rose said. “The leadership means what it says about pluralism.”
Arcidiacono’s hiring further illustrates a distinction President Daniels has attempted to draw between his own policy views and the intellectual composition he wants for the university. Hopkins signed an amicus brief supporting race-conscious admissions in SFFA, and Daniels has called the subsequent decline in racial diversity at the university “regrettable.” Arcidiacono, meanwhile, provided expert testimony for the plaintiffs who challenged those admissions policies.
When The Chronicle of Higher Education pointed to Arcidiacono’s hiring as evidence of Daniels’s commitment to pluralism despite that disagreement, Daniels agreed with the characterization.
“I’m not interested in how people vote. That’s not the question. I’m interested in the subjects they tackle and the intellectual traditions they honor and work from,” Daniels said.
In a July article from RealClearInvestigations, higher-education scholar Neil Gross named Hopkins as one of the top universities promoting ideological pluralism. President Daniels has indeed been a central architect of those efforts. Notably, Daniels’ interest in pluralism predates the current political pressure on universities and the ensuing academic controversy.
In 2019, while on a trip to review the accreditation of Central European University in Hungary, Daniels saw firsthand the Soros-founded institution’s battle with Viktor Orbán’s nationalist government. Viewing CEU as a bastion of progressive ideology, the Orbán government forced it to relocate outside the country. Daniels later used that episode as the introduction to his 2021 book What Universities Owe Democracy, in which he argued that universities must defend their autonomy while remaining capable of self-criticism and self-renewal by promoting intellectual pluralism and dialogue across difference. Initiatives such as the partnership with AEI, as well as student-facing initiatives like the Student Blue Jay Dialogue Innovation Fund, have become material manifestations of that latter goal. Another example is Daniel’s recent decision to engage with the White House on the “National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards,” a memo from Education Secretary Linda McMahon that explicitly called for universities to undertake self-reflection and institutional renewal and asked how they would promote intellectual pluralism and open inquiry. In The Chronicle, Daniels responded to a joint statement from the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) condemning his engagement.
“Quite frankly, it’s inconceivable to me that when we had the opportunity to engage in a constructive dialogue with senior leadership in the White House . . . that we would turn down that opportunity,” Daniels said. “It’s the government elected by the citizens of America.”
Faculty chairs of the Heterodox Academy confirm that the President’s Office has been “very supportive” of their efforts on campus aimed at viewpoint diversity and free expression. While Daniels’s influence has limits, particularly over already established academic departments that retain substantial control over hiring, faculty members say the message from senior leadership has been unmistakable.
“At meetings with top brass, department chairs and program heads are hearing ‘pluralism, pluralism, pluralism,’” Essam told RealClearInvestigations.
Public statements and appearances by other senior faculty members corroborate that view. Last October, Dean Celenza of the School of Arts and Sciences appeared on a Heterodox Academy regional conference panel where he advocated for intellectual diversity and open inquiry in higher education. At the same conference, professor of international relations and former chair of political science Steven David, who teaches the long-running undergraduate course “Does Israel Have a Future?”, emphasized the pedagogical value of bringing students with divergent views into sustained conversation.
Yet for faculty members like Siraganian, these arguments seem not to have persuaded.
Siraganian’s essay prompted swift responses from scholars across the country. Samuel J. Abrams, a nonresident senior fellow at AEI, responded with his own “Seven Theses for Viewpoint Diversity.”
“Far from being ‘anathema,’ intellectual diversity is the condition for academic freedom,” Abrams wrote.
Abrams challenged Siraganian’s premise that established “disciplinary standards” are politically neutral, arguing that ideological conformity can itself shape which ideas scholars deem legitimate.
“When entire schools of thought are dismissed out of hand, that is not a lack of politics; it is politics masquerading as scholarship,” Abrams added.
Writing in Public Discourse, a publication of the conservative Witherspoon Institute, Matthew Franck and John Londregan also criticized Siraganian’s argument.
“Sneers, exaggerations, false comparisons, and non sequiturs are what her theses have going for them. In these respects, she neatly illustrates the need for the intellectual challenge viewpoint diversity promises, on her own campus and others,” Franck and Londregan wrote.
Political scientist Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, likewise challenged Siraganian’s reliance on settled scientific questions as an analogy for academic inquiry in the humanities and social sciences.
“Inquiry into and arguments about human nature, justice, virtue, regimes, citizenship, friendship, romantic love, family, the soul, and God differ from inquiry into and arguments about molecules,” he wrote.
Berkowitz also cited Hopkins political scientist Steven Teles, who has written extensively on the causes and consequences of academia’s lack of viewpoint diversity, specifically its ideological imbalance.
“[Ideological diversity] matters because the subjects that conservatives are typically most interested in — religion, the classics, civil society, war, the military, etc. — are relatively disfavored as subjects in much of the humanities and social sciences,” Teles wrote in National Affairs in 2024.
Two University faculty members also entered the debate, albeit offering narrower and slightly different defenses of pluralism. Jeanne-Marie Jackson, an English professor and director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, defended initiatives aimed at intellectual pluralism, but by sharply distinguishing the term from “viewpoint diversity.” Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jackson described “intellectual pluralism” as an “epistemic ideal,” whereas “viewpoint diversity” risks flattening scholarship into a crude sorting of ideological positions. Andrew Perrin, chair of the sociology department and a member of the Civic Thought Project, expressed a similar preference for language, favoring the term “ideological pluralism.” Perrin also took aim at what he identified as a flawed assumption underlying Siraganian’s critique: that “disciplinary standards” and “academic expertise” are wholly apolitical and therefore require no corrective scrutiny. Even when disciplinary standards are, quoting Siraganian, settled upon by “collective expertise,” Perrin argued that the process of settlement itself can carry political judgments.
In a more recent piece for The Chronicle, Perrin was more direct about the problem of ideological conformity in his own discipline.
“Sociology as a discipline is weakened by how intensely ideological it is, and in particular, how ideologically left it is,” Perrin said.
Perrin argued that such homogeneity can prevent scholars from considering alternative hypotheses or research questions as worthy of investigation. Daniels has pointed to empirical research on such ideological imbalance as part of his own rationale for the university’s pluralism push.
“That critique has been made by a number of different scholars, and they have compelling empirical evidence to support the claim that we have systematically excluded faculty whose scholarship, whose intellectual framework, is conservative in orientation,” Daniels told The Chronicle.
Weeks after publishing her seven theses, Siraganian reaffirmed her argument in The Chronicle, castigating the movement for viewpoint diversity as a “MAGA plot” and its supporters as disingenuous. The Hopkins chapter of the Heterodox Academy subsequently invited her to debate the issue publicly at a forum co-hosted by the SNF Agora Institute, alongside Perrin and Jackson. Siraganian declined to participate.
The future of higher education at Hopkins (and across the American academy) may well rest on which vision of higher education and academia ultimately prevails. But for now, the political momentum and the will of institutional leadership appear to lie with those insisting that universities cannot afford intellectual or ideological conformity.
