Johns Hopkins president helped craft Trump’s new higher education framework

Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels helped the Trump administration craft a new higher education framework released this week, calling on universities to hire more conservative faculty, lower tuition, combat grade inflation and make other institutional changes in line with the administration’s agenda.

Daniels’ involvement in the framework is the latest indication of his foray into conservative politics and desire to work alongside a presidential administration that has weakened his university. Daniels, who was one of four college president consulted by the Trump administration, has sought to recruit more conservative voices into academia and wrote extensively about viewpoint diversity in his 2021 book “What Universities Owe Democracy” — even as the Trump administration’s policies were stripping research money from Hopkins.

The administration’s call to action, sent by Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Monday, urges university presidents and governing boards by year end to publish statements outlining their plans to reform their institutions.

McMahon asked colleges to make public commitments to merit-based admissions; free speech on campus; intellectual pluralism; high academic standards and rigor in the age of AI; and safeguarding research integrity from malign foreign influence. Less than half of Americans say they have faith in the nation’s colleges and universities, largely due to the perceived cost and political agendas of schools, and McMahon wrote that the reforms would help restore public trust in higher education.

In a statement to The Banner, Daniels wrote that he believes the college presidents involved “helped move the conversation toward transparency and accountability in ways that respect academic freedom and institutional autonomy.”

The document, he said, “gives us a good opportunity to show how we have heard criticisms and acted on them. And it’s not just the administration who will read the answers but our fellow citizens, who can get a sense for themselves of whether we are properly discharging our responsibilities to the public.”

Hopkins intends to release an official response to the call to action after consulting with the community members and stakeholders at the university.

“If we had been asked to write the questionnaire, we would have phrased parts of it quite differently, reflecting our faith in the mission and impact of higher education,” Daniels wrote to The Banner. “Regardless of that, I support the core principle that universities, including Hopkins, should explain how we are addressing these issues, in ways that are true to our mission and values.”

Unlike last year’s Compact for Excellence in Higher Education, which offered preferential federal funding to universities that agreed to adopt certain policies like freezing tuition and limiting international enrollment, the administration’s new call to action is non-binding. It instead calls on college leaders to prominently publish statements outlining their commitments to reforms on their websites.

Daniels was approached to consult on the plan by Jenna Storey, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and colleague of Daniels, who worked with her on an initiative announced last year to promote viewpoint diversity in the faculty.

“I’ve worked to connect a number of academic leaders with Trump administration officials,” Storey said. “I’ve done so because I think that opening pathways of conversation is crucial for universities to regain the bipartisan support they need to maintain the levels of public funding that have allowed them to become world-class institutions.”

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration also consulted Andrew Martin, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis; Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University; and Doug Girod, chancellor of the University of Kansas — as well as Barbara Snyder, president American Association of Universities, of which Daniels is vice chair.

Daniels declined to share details of the conversations the presidents had with McMahon, but said they had a “handful of robust, frank meetings and were pleased with how responsive Secretary McMahon and her team were to our concerns.”

The partnership may seem surprising to some, since Johns Hopkins has been severely impacted by Trump administration policies that cancel federal research grants and revoke student visas. Since President Donald Trump took office last year, Hopkins has suffered losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. The university has lost federal research funding due to canceled grants and cuts to the National Institutes of Health and USAID. Last spring, it laid off more than 2,000 employees, the largest separation in its history. The university laid off about 110 more employees earlier this summer and is in the midst of a hiring freeze.

Daniels, who last year was one of the highest paid college presidents in the country, has led Hopkins through several changes in his 17-year tenure that align with the latest call to action by the Trump administration.

The university ended legacy admissions more than five years ago, and last fall announced that students from families making under $200,000 a year would receive free tuition.

Though the move may position Hopkins favorably to the Trump administration, not all community members are pleased.

Ahmed Ragab, an associate professor at the university and vice president of the American Association of University Professors Hopkins chapter, acknowledged that the new call to action was better than the first compact, but said he was disappointed that Daniels hadn’t consulted with the Hopkins faculty.

“A lot of things in the new compact are red herrings for conservative priorities,” Ragab said. “Reform needs to happen through the channels of faculty governance.”

Many faculty at the university are upset that Daniels did not inform them of his participation ahead of time, Ragab said. He and other AAUP leaders only learned of it from news articles, Ragab noted.

“We’re still waiting to hear from the Hopkins administration about President Daniels’ involvement in this,” he said. “We’re disappointed in the lack of transparency, and we believe we should’ve been informed about this much sooner.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.