Ronald J. Daniels
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President, The Johns Hopkins University
Ronald J. Daniels became the 14th president of The Johns Hopkins University in March 2009. A law and economics scholar, he holds an appointment as professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins. Prior to his appointment, he served as provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and dean and James M. Tory Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
In his inaugural address, Daniels laid out three guiding themes of his presidency: fostering individual excellence, furthering interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching, and engaging the university with challenging civic issues on local, national and international levels. These principles have resonated throughout Daniels’s career and build on the longstanding tradition of excellence at America’s first research university.
Under Daniels’ leadership, the university has remained steadfastly committed to ensuring broad access to higher education. In 2010-2011, for example, Johns Hopkins increased its investments in undergraduate financial aid by 10.5 percent, and committed $5 million in additional funds to graduate stipend supplements for doctoral candidates in Arts and Sciences. These steps bolstered efforts taken across Johns Hopkins’ nine schools.
Daniels has also worked with university leadership to enhance collective, strategic decision-making across the institution, and to foster rich, multi-divisional partnerships. These collaborations include the launch of centers such as the Environment, Energy, Sustainability and Health Institute (E2SHI), as well as ongoing efforts to harness the university’s interdisciplinary talents to advance society’s understanding of issues ranging from individualized health to space.
With a strong appreciation for the fact that Johns Hopkins is “truly and proudly of Baltimore,” Daniels has been deeply engaged in the city. He launched the Johns Hopkins Takes Time for Schools initiative that gives employees paid time off to work in the city’s public schools, and championed the new Community Impact Internships, which match undergraduates with agencies and nonprofit organizations doing good work across Baltimore. Daniels has also been personally involved in the bold and ambitious neighborhood revitalization plan of East Baltimore Development Inc. This effort includes Johns Hopkins’ significant commitment of financial and personnel resources to develop a K through 8 school, which the School of Education operates in partnership with Morgan State University. This civic engagement is not only local. His early global initiatives include the creation of Global Health Awards, which send undergraduate and graduate students to pursue public health experiences across the developing world, and facilitating the establishment of the Benjamin and Rhea Yeung Center for Collaborative China Studies to foster interdisciplinary research in China.
As Penn’s chief academic officer, he helped implement a comprehensive financial aid program that eliminated loans for undergraduates with financial need, and promoted initiatives to enhance university life for both students and faculty. He established university-wide leadership development programs for faculty, and strengthened both promotion standards and retention strategies, with a particular attention to women and underrepresented minorities. Daniels also worked closely with senior leadership to launch university-wide research initiatives and enhance the institution’s global impact. Daniels also increased Penn’s engagement with local and national issues through, for example, initiatives that connected high school students in the Philadelphia school system with Penn faculty members. He spearheaded a national research conference on Capitol Hill, focused on the policy dimensions of Hurricane Katrina, just three months after the disaster.
During his decade as dean of the University of Toronto’s School of Law, Daniels doubled the size of the faculty, cut the student-faculty ratio, dramatically enlarged the endowment, increased financial aid, and spearheaded initiatives to strengthen curricula reforms, student services, international recruitment, social engagement, and interdisciplinary programs.
While in Canada, Daniels was an active participant in public policy formulation, and also served as president of the Council of Canadian Law Deans, president of the Council of Ontario Law Deans, and member of the Board of Governors of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He co-founded International Lawyers and Economists Against Poverty, and founded and chaired Pro Bono Students Canada, which places law students in community-based organizations across Canada.
Daniels’ research focuses on the intersections of law, economics, development and public policy, in such areas as corporate and securities law, social and economic regulation and the role of law and legal institutions in promoting third world development. He is an author or editor of seven books, including Rule of Law Reform and Development (2008), on the role of legal institutions in the economies of third world countries, and Rethinking the Welfare State (2005), an analysis of global social welfare policies, especially the effectiveness of government vouchers (both co-authored with Michael Trebilcock). He is also the author or co-author of dozens of scholarly articles.
Daniels currently sits on the boards of the East Baltimore Development Inc., the Baltimore Community Foundation, the Goldseker Foundation, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, the Governor's International Advisory Council, and the Asia Pacific Rim Universities World Institute. He is serving as a member of the Association of American Universities-Association of Leading Russian Universities steering committee to help guide collaborations between member universities. He is also engaged in the Center for Health Policy and Healthcare Transformation at Johns Hopkins.
Daniels earned an LLM from Yale University in 1988 and a JD in 1986 from the University of Toronto, where he served as co-editor-in-chief of the law review and earned several academic honors. He received a BA from the University of Toronto in 1982, with high distinction as a political science and economics major. He has been visiting professor and Coca-Cola World Fellow at Yale Law School and John M. Olin Visiting Fellow at Cornell Law School. In 2009, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Daniels was born in Toronto, Canada. He, and his wife, Joanne Rosen, a human rights lawyer, have four children. He is the fourth Johns Hopkins president to live among the university’s undergraduates, at Nichols House on the Homewood campus.