Ronald J. Daniels is the President of Johns Hopkins University. On Dec. 10, President Daniels spoke with The News-Letter in an exclusive interview discussing expression and protest on campus, the drop in racial diversity in incoming classes following the Supreme Court reversal of affirmative action, the implementation of the Johns Hopkins Police Department and more.
The News-Letter: Protest and free expression on campus have been very prevalent themes this past academic year in light of the encampment last spring, as well as the recent graffiti and disruptions on campus. The administration’s school-wide email two weeks ago suggested that these forms of protest are not in alignment with the school’s commitment to free expression. Can you discuss what the University’s commitment to free expression entails? How should students protest for issues they are passionate about and what forms of protest are acceptable forms of dialogue on campus?
Ronald J. Daniels: I think it's important to start with a clear statement of where the University is on expression and academic freedom. Fundamentally, I see the University as a place apart that is really defined by its commitment to be an environment where people can raise controversial issues, can put forward provocative positions, and can challenge the status quo, with the sense that what we are trying to do as an institution is get closer to truth.
It requires things like a clear statement of academic freedom, which we have, and a properly designed and supported tenure process, so that faculty feel they can challenge dogma and know that it doesn't jeopardize their careers. It also requires that there is support for appropriate moments of demonstration and protests, when people feel that, quite apart from what they might do and say in a classroom or in a scholarly context, they have the capacity to bring more attention to an issue and present a different view, which we saw, here at Hopkins, but also across the country over the past year, in relation to the conflict between Israel and Gaza.
For me, the bedrock principle is one of protection of expression, trying to find the broadest possible scope for expression, and understanding that in protecting that expression – all again in service of truth and discovery – that people will say things that are going to upset, enrage or hurt other people. We understand that that is part of what it means to be in a community that is dedicated to a really vigorous exchange of ideas and debate.
It’s in that context that the kinds of restrictions you place on speech are really carefully constructed, and that applies to protests as to other forms of speech. I think it's totally legitimate to have time, place and manner restrictions on the way in which people exercise their speech rights, so that we ensure that the operations of the university are continued and not disrupted. We want to ensure that one person's interest in communicating or conveying their sense of truth doesn't suppress another person's ability to share their own view.
Kinds of speech that destroy or vandalize certain parts of the campus or that deface buildings or signage on campus are not protected. We regard these acts as outside the boundaries of protected speech. Our view is that the kinds of speech that have good truth content and that improve the character of debate and dialogue on campus can be done without destroying, defacing parts of campus, or as an extreme example, creating risks for others that cross the line into types of harassment that are prohibited.
N-L: Conversations about campus security and policing have been prevalent on campus both this and last academic year, especially with regard to the Johns Hopkins Police Department (JHPD). How do you respond to some of the protests voiced by Teachers and Researchers United, Hopkins Justice Collective and other advocacy groups that suggest that the JHPD will harm rather than help campus security, impacting minority groups in particular? What do you envision JHPD’s role on campus to be and in Charles Village at large?
RD: The concerns around constitutional policing, and in particular, racialized policing were front and center right from the very moment that we talked about establishing a sworn police force at Johns Hopkins. Those concerns were central and I think appropriate in light of the fact that we were designing a sworn force from the ground up at a very different point in American history than when most peers established sworn forces with only modest legislative guidance or control.
Indeed, if you examine the public universities in Maryland that have sworn police on their campuses, you will see that their enabling legislation is really, really short. It's a page or two. In contrast, the legislation that stipulates the creation of the 100 person Johns Hopkins police force is 27 pages with very detailed requirements.
In my mind, all of those requirements are designed to ensure that the concerns about racialized policing, lack of constitutional policing or a failure to follow best practices in terms of community policing are set out in a very detailed and legislated form, which is important. It's my hope and expectation that those requirements, coupled with the painstaking and careful process that we've been utilizing in implementing the force — first recruiting Dr. Bard as head of the force, and then his efforts in recruiting commissioned police officers — demonstrate our commitment to this being a force that is different from some of the some of the really problematic forces we have seen in this country.
Though we have seen a significant improvement in some aspects of public safety within the city of Baltimore, particularly this last year, we still know that we have continuing problems with criminal violence, and that it's not just a matter for other parts of the city— from the RAVE warnings and so forth, you see these incidents happening on or near campus.
We believe that this relatively small but well trained and highly accountable police force will ultimately contribute to improvement of public safety for the campus and its environments. In terms of the boundaries of where the police force can and cannot go, that, again, was spelled out in a very detailed way in the legislation. We have very clear boundaries in which the force can operate. Within Charles Village — for the areas close to campus that are within our boundaries — we are able to police, but for those areas that are outside this boundary, we lack jurisdiction for regular patrols.
For those members of our community who were not here when we decided to seek a sworn force, it was not the case that we woke up one day and created a framework and this whole structure for the police force. It was an idea that was extensively deliberated, negotiated, analyzed, debated, and critiqued. I felt really good at the end of that process that with the compromises made and the structure put in place, we would be able to demonstrate that we can do constitutional policing in a way that avoids the worst failures that we've seen in American and international policing, but at the same time, secure the benefits for enhanced public safety on campus.
N-L: Next, we would like to turn the discussion to university admissions. In the previous admission cycle, which was the first cycle following the Supreme Court reversal of affirmative action, racial diversity on campus dropped, and SGA and several cultural and affinity organizations, including the Black Student Union and Olé, expressed concerns about what this drop means for the University going forward and how it can be mitigated. What are your reactions to these numbers, how will they impact the University and what steps will the University pursue to prioritize diversity in this ongoing admission cycle?
RD: From the communication that we sent out that addressed the significant drop in the percentage of underrepresented minority students who were enrolling in the class post the Supreme Court decision, we made it clear that we were really disappointed with the results. In terms of the character of the class and the extent of the work that we had done over a decade or longer steadily increasing both the racial and socioeconomic diversity of each class, it was a set back.
We improved our socioeconomic diversity this past year. The percentage of Pell students in the first- year class is 23.8% — the highest it has ever been at Hopkins. But, the representation of underrepresented minority groups dropped precipitously. I think it's important to underscore the extent to which, over a period of years, we had really worked hard, under the requirements the Supreme Court stipulated for holistic admissions, to increase access to the University.
The value we place on diversity and our belief that it matters for a healthy and dynamic institution have not changed. That commitment was there before the SCOTUS decision, and it's there afterwards. Indeed, I think it's important to underscore the number of amicus briefs and other kinds of advocacy we did in support of the retention of affirmative action, because we believed that if we lost that tool, it was going to have a serious effect on our ability to continue to recruit the kind of class that we worked to achieve.
Again, it's worth noting that it wasn't a light commitment to diversity here. It was serious and unstinting. U.S. News and World Report declared Johns Hopkins as one of the four most diverse universities out of all 440 that they rank. That was based on last year's data, before the SCOTUS decision. I always say that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. There was no ambiguity about where we were when we had the ability to do so.
In light of the results of the past admissions cycle, what are we doing? One effort is that we have an extensive program for outreach to high schools where there are populations that we think would be great to have at Hopkins. We’re looking at using a host of different tools that will allow us, without again violating the guidance of the Supreme Court, to be able to look more broadly at the obstacles that people have overcome to be able to get to the point where they can contemplate a university education. It requires a lot of work on how we improve the percentage of students who ultimately, after we make an offer of admission, will decide to come to Hopkins.
The final thing we're very seriously contemplating is a simplification of our financial aid program, so that we are sending clear signals, particularly to people from backgrounds where they're going to be entitled to financial aid, to make it easier to understand how they can land here.
We are really hopeful that with scrupulous attention and respect for the Court's decision in Students for Fair Admissions, we can nevertheless find ourselves developing new pathways to rebuilding the diversity that we worked so hard to create over a period of a decade plus.
N-L: With the opening of the new Bloomberg Center and the forthcoming School of Government and Policy, what do you envision the role of Hopkins in Washington, D.C. will be, and how will this complement the work of academic divisions here in Baltimore and globally?
RD: Hopkins in D.C. is such a powerful statement in terms of our obligation as a University to be part of national and international conversations rooted in the nation’s capital. In just the first year of its life, there were more than 500 different events that took place at the new Bloomberg Center. And, what’s amazing is that virtually every part of the University was represented — it’s become an asset of the entire University, which was our aspiration.
We are energized about the creation of the new School of Government and Policy, because we see it as another way to build our presence in Washington and at the same time, take advantage of all the distributed strengths of the University in the sciences, health policy, engineering and so forth. The new school so nicely complements the existing schools and there is the opportunity to bring undergraduate students into the new School of Government to take courses there — maybe minors and perhaps majors in due course.
We are committed to Baltimore. But, being in Baltimore, people often miss the extent to which we are a part of the region near the national capital, which gives us a proximity to so many of the critical decisions that are being made with national and international ramifications. Having the Hopkins Bloomberg Center as a place that is open to all parts of the University and for broad public debate and inquiry gives ample opportunities for involvement by students, and hopefully creates the sense more generally within Baltimore of our relevance to these national debates.
N-L: Hopkins is funding a new Data Science and Artificial Intelligence building, which a lot of engineering students are very excited about. Can you share some of the goals and programs offered by the new facility?
RD: The decision that we've made as a university to take seriously the importance of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence through the creation of this program is really meaningful. I think it's important that this idea, like the School of Government, grew out of the Ten for One process where we spent a lot of time dreaming together as a university community about priorities we wanted to bring to the University. We had a lot of consultation, deliberation, and then ultimately, the sense that we have a real opportunity with data science and AI, with these new technologies, to be more impactful.
The DSAI will be situated within the Whiting School of Engineering. The faculty, graduate students, and postdocs will be concentrated there. But as important as it is that we have this kind of concentrated capability in the Whiting School of Engineering, what we really wanted to do was extend out to virtually every part of the university the possibility of using these methodologies and approaches to enhance the character of research.
It wasn't just to achieve greater understanding of data science and AI in an engineering context, but to say, how does this change our understanding of climate change, and how can we model it differently using AI? How can we think about some of the broad social changes in the country, demographic changes and so forth, and use the capabilities of data science and AI to be able to help sociology or precision medicine? Fundamentally, it stems from this incredible capacity that we can draw from the new methodologies that come out of data science and AI.
It is worth noting how central the role of students is in the design of DSAI. We are constantly asking ourselves questions about the nature of student involvement. How do we ensure that students are securing research opportunities based on data science and AI? How can we support opportunities for students to draw on this training to create startup companies? With such a significant investment, we ultimately want to see this as a place from which we promote ideas that have impact. New innovations could end up being developed by companies that will start in Baltimore and stay in Baltimore and help us build employment and the tax base within the city.
We see this as a big bet for us, a bet on technology, a bet on the way in which it can support different parts of the university and a bet on how we can enhance the quality of research and education that's taking place here. But ultimately, it's a bet on Baltimore. We are determined to ensure that the bounty of this investment is shared with Baltimore, and see Baltimore become an important center for innovation in this area.
Leo Qi and Samhi Boppana contributed reporting to this article.
