Ronald J. Daniels, the provost and chief academic
officer of the University of Pennsylvania, was
elected last week as the 14th president of The Johns
Hopkins University. In a special meeting on Nov.
11, the university's board of trustees accepted a unanimous
recommendation from its Presidential
Search Committee.
Daniels will take office March 2, succeeding William
R. Brody, who is stepping down after nearly
12 years as leader of America's first — and in terms
of research dollars, its largest — research-intensive
university. Brody, who originally had planned to depart
Dec. 31, will remain president through February.
Daniels, a distinguished scholar and academic
administrator, emerged from an international
search involving nearly 300 nominees and interviews with
academic leaders from the nation's most
important research universities.
Pamela P. Flaherty, chair of both the board of
trustees and the search committee, said that
Daniels "stood out in a truly remarkable field of highly
qualified candidates for this senior leadership
position."
"Ron is a strategic thinker, known for articulating
and implementing bold and visionary academic
ideas and initiatives," Flaherty said. "He impressed the
committee with his passion for the academic
enterprise, his record of academic entrepreneurship and his
commitment to building excellence in both
the basic sciences and multidisciplinary research centers
and institutes.
"He has breadth and depth of experience with the
oversight of academic programs for
undergraduate, graduate and professional students at Penn,"
she said. "He's a great communicator and
inspires those with whom he works to push constantly for
greater achievement, both institutional and
personal.
"He has a remarkable record as Penn's chief academic
officer, helping to accelerate Penn's rise
to pre-eminence among the nation's universities," Flaherty
said. "With a vast portfolio of
responsibilities, he focused in particular on the
recruitment of an outstanding cadre of faculty across
the disciplines; an increase in the diversity of faculty
and students; the implementation of new and
exciting programs to enrich the undergraduate experience at
Penn; the development of new
international programs, including programs in the medical
sciences; a program to expand Penn's
interdisciplinary collaboration; new modes of technology
transfer; and many other areas."
Daniels said he was honored to have been recruited as
a candidate for the committee's
consideration and opted to consider the Johns Hopkins
presidency, despite his deep affection for
Penn, because of the university's "extraordinary academic
reputation, its commitment to research
excellence and the leadership role it plays in so many
domains of scientific and social inquiry."
He said he became increasingly excited about Johns
Hopkins as he learned more about the
university, including its broad research program in the
life and physical sciences, the faculty's new
crossdisciplinary initiatives and its strengths in the
humanities, social sciences, technology, music,
international affairs, education, business and the health
professions.
Daniels met several times with the members of the
presidential search committee. He also
made an unannounced visit to Baltimore during the summer,
saying later that he was struck by the
positive energy that pervaded its campuses, even between
semesters, and by the beauty of the
Homewood campus.
"The more I read about Johns Hopkins, about its
research and about the quality of its
undergraduate and graduate students," Daniels said, "and
the more I learned about the passion and
commitment of the university's trustees, alumni and friends
around the globe, the more I was
convinced that my own aspirations to serve as leader of one
of the world's most great universities and
the aspirations of Johns Hopkins were consistent.
"I was impressed, too," he said, "by the values and
traditions that make Johns Hopkins unique. I
was thrilled by the prospect of playing a role in its quest
for ever-greater excellence. It will be a
privilege to be a part of that and to lead an institution
with that kind of aspiration and devotion."
Brody said he is deeply impressed by Daniels.
"Ron Daniels has the experience, drive and personality
to take Johns Hopkins to the next level
of excellence," he said. "He has a wonderfully relaxed and
engaging personality. He's widely read, and
he's a scholar on a broad range of issues, many of which
relate to public policy on important issues in
our society. With that background, he'll be an effective
advocate for research universities and higher
education in Washington."
Daniels also paid tribute to his predecessor, who
during his tenure focused on undergraduate
education, diversity, Johns Hopkins' role in the community
and the importance of research.
"Bill Brody has, by any measure, been an extraordinary
leader at Johns Hopkins and in higher
education," Daniels said. "As strong as Johns Hopkins was
before Bill started, it is so much stronger
now. It's wonderful to be able to step into his very large
shoes and to continue to take this institution
forward and do so on such a strong foundation."
Daniels has been provost of the University of
Pennsylvania since 2005. As Penn's chief academic
officer, he has broad and comprehensive responsibility for
undergraduate and graduate education,
faculty affairs, research and technology transfer, global
initiatives, student life, athletics, admissions,
arts and culture, and libraries. The deans of Penn's 12
schools report to him on academic and budget
matters.
"Ron Daniels is a gifted academic leader, a noted
scholar and an energetic collaborator with a
passion for excellence," Penn President Amy Gutmann said.
"He has been a wonderful partner to me, an
exceptional colleague to our faculty and staff and a
cherished friend to the Penn community. Johns
Hopkins is extremely fortunate to have Ron as its next
president."
Arthur H. Rubenstein, executive vice president of Penn
and dean of its School of Medicine, said,
"Ron's enthusiasm for the work of Penn Medicine has known
no bounds. His intellectual curiosity and
rigor for research, his long-standing devotion to teaching
and his appreciation for the challenges of
running a large health system have created a strong and
effective partnership between the university,
the medical school and the health system."
Throughout his career, Daniels has been deeply
committed to the role of universities in
promoting global understanding. He has expanded Penn's
global relationships, especially with the
government and university of Botswana in their efforts to
fight HIV and AIDS; initiated programs
that draw global leaders, writers and activists to Penn's
campus; and developed the Penn World
Scholars Program, which enables some of the most
outstanding applicants from the developing world
to attend Penn as undergraduates.
Ron Daniels and his wife, Joanne
Rosen, a human rights lawyer.
Photo by Jay VanRensselaer / HIPS
|
Daniels has also increased Penn's engagement with
local and national issues, through such
initiatives as a monthlong Summer Mentorship Program, in
which high school students from the
Philadelphia school system work directly with Penn faculty
members. He spearheaded a national
research conference on Capitol Hill focused on the policy
dimensions of Hurricane Katrina, which took
place within three months of the disaster and resulted in
the published volume On Risk and Disaster:
Lessons from Hurricane Katrina.
For Penn undergraduates, he has worked with the
president and the executive vice president to
implement a comprehensive new financial aid program that
eliminates loans for students with financial
need. He has introduced innovative programs to enhance the
quality of the undergraduate experience,
including Undergraduate Research Mentorships, in which
students collaborate directly with faculty
members on research projects; Ideas in Action, in which
students work with policy-makers to solve
concrete policy problems; Distinguished International
Scholars, which brings to Penn 10 leading
international figures to teach undergraduates for two
weeks; and Civic Scholars, which combines
community service and social advocacy with close faculty
supervision and specially designed courses.
"Although the principal responsibility of a university
is to provide a rigorous undergraduate
academic experience," Daniels said, "we know that
expectation is matched by expectations for
experience that goes beyond the classroom and reflects an
interest in moral development,
development of understanding of the broader needs of the
community and development of
opportunities for leadership."
For graduate students, Daniels significantly
strengthened financial aid, particularly in the
School of Arts and Sciences; promoted "family-friendly"
initiatives that include dependent care leaves
for doctoral students; introduced new measures to help
students progress toward their degrees and
receive timely feedback from their committees; and, in
concert with graduate student leaders,
created a new award program to provide grants to graduate
students engaged in interdisciplinary
scholarship.
For faculty, Daniels established universitywide
faculty mentoring and leadership development
programs, strengthened appointment and promotion standards,
and enriched strategies to recruit and
retain outstanding faculty, with particular attention to
women and underrepresented minorities.
Daniels came to Penn from the University of Toronto,
where he was dean of the Faculty of Law
and James M. Tory Professor of Law.
"Ron Daniels ranks with the most gifted academic
leaders I know," said J. Robert S. Prichard,
president emeritus of the University of Toronto. "For a
university of the distinction, strength and
ambition of Johns Hopkins, Ron will be a magnificent
president, leading Hopkins to even higher
standing among the world's finest universities. He is a
superb choice."
"I think it's a brilliant choice on Johns Hopkins'
part," said Robert J. Birgeneau, who also was
president at the University of Toronto during Daniels' time
as dean and is now chancellor of the
University of California, Berkeley. "He's a visionary. He
will be very ambitious for the university. He
will be unrelenting in terms of applying the highest
standards. I'm confident that the faculty will find
him to be an inspiring leader. I think he's a very worthy
successor to Bill Brody, who has been one of
Hopkins' greatest presidents."
During his 10 years as dean, Daniels doubled the size
of the Toronto law faculty, recruited
global scholars and cut the student-faculty ratio from
18-to-1 to 10-to-1; dramatically enlarged the
endowment; increased financial aid; implemented
comprehensive reforms of curricula, student services
and faculty research standards; and spearheaded initiatives
to strengthen international recruitment,
social engagement and interdisciplinary programs.
He initiated a program to teach law and justice at two
inner-city high schools, co-founded
International Lawyers and Economists Against Poverty and
founded and chaired Pro Bono Students
Canada, which places more than 2,000 law students each year
in community-based organizations across
Canada.
Daniels' research focuses on law, economics 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 author or editor of seven
books, most recently 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 books
co-authored with Michael Trebilcock). He is also
the author or co-author of numerous scholarly articles.
Daniels earned an LLM in 1988 from Yale University 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 in 1982 from the University of Toronto,
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.
Daniels was born on July 16, 1959, in Toronto, Canada.
He and his wife, Joanne Rosen, a human
rights lawyer, are the parents of four teenagers. He will be the fourth Johns Hopkins president to live
in Nichols House on the Homewood campus.
Rosen is currently a lecturer at the Annenberg School
for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on communications
law and on the right to privacy. She
served as counsel to the Ontario Human Rights Commission in
Toronto for 17 years, from 1988 to
2005, and litigated human rights claims at all levels of
the Canadian courts, including the Supreme
Court of Canada. She also served as an adjunct faculty
member at the University of Toronto Faculty
of Law, teaching human rights law, and as an instructor in
the Bar Admission Course.
GO TO