Ronald J. Daniels named president of Johns Hopkins University

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Nov 12, 2008 by Danielle Ulman

Ronald J. Daniels' family will trade in cheese whiz for Old Bay seasoning this March when he becomes president of the Johns Hopkins University.

"The kids are willing to swap cheese steaks for crab cakes," Daniels said.

Hopkins officials announced the selection of Daniels, provost at the University of Pennsylvania and a former law school dean and professor, as president Tuesday.

Daniels, a 49-year-old Canadian, will replace Dr. William R. Brody, who has served for 12 years as president. Brody will stay on through February, and Daniels will take office March 2.

Making education available to qualified students will be a priority for Daniels, who worked to eliminate loans for students with financial needs at Penn.

"Accessibility is very important to me," he said. "There is no better mechanism for changing social status than higher education."

The university's board of trustees interviewed more than 300 candidates for the position before choosing Daniels, said Pamela P. Flaherty, chairwoman of the board and the presidential search committee.

"We looked at Ron because he is the provost of a research- intensive school," Flaherty said. "What we wanted, what we have, I think, is a gifted leader."

Daniels has a strong leadership background. He came to Penn in 2005 after spending 10 years at the University of Toronto as dean of the Faculty of Law and James M. Tory Professor of Law.

"He was a really transformative dean here," said Mayo Moran, dean of the law school at Toronto, who worked with Daniels for more than a decade.

"He became dean when he was very young," she said. "He was very instrumental in encouraging us think higher and more ambitiously in our research."

He also revamped the school's "primitive" financial aid program, Moran said. Now, the school's system serves as a model for other Canadian institutions.

Richard Swirnow, a graduate of Hopkins' engineering program and the developer of Baltimore's HarborView, said there are a lot of terrific minds at Hopkins, and leadership is what brings it all together.

"I think the committee has probably selected him because he meets all of the initiatives that the university would like to pursue, and when you have many initiatives as they do, leadership is important," he said.

Daniels has studied law, economics and public policy, and has written or edited seven books, including his most recent book, "Rule of Law Reform and Development," published this year.

Although Daniels does not have a background in medicine, during his time at Penn he worked to connect the medical school to the rest of the university, and focused on faculty recruitment and retention.

"There has been no part of my job that I've enjoyed more than working with the medical school and health sciences," he said. Despite his love for Penn, Daniels said he could not pass up the "opportunity to be part of an institution that has the world's leading medical school."

Daniels will have no trouble picking up the medical field, according to former classmate and colleague Ed Morgan, a law professor at the University of Toronto. When Daniels was still in Toronto, he did some work for a hydroelectric energy company without having knowledge of the industry.

"It's true, [medicine] is kind of far from his academic field and his professional experience, but he's a pretty quick study," Morgan said. "The good news is there's never a dull moment with Ron around. He's a very dynamic leader, brimming with new ideas."

Brody will become president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., in March. He will retire a couple months after completing a $3.2 billion fundraising campaign that began eight years ago. Today's economic climate could make raising money for the school much more difficult, he said.

"If you look at universities, and Hopkins is no different ... all of our revenue sources are challenged today," Brody said. "It's figuring out how to weather the storm, and we will weather the storm."

Daniels is also known for his fundraising skills. At the University of Toronto he took the law school's endowment from $1 million to $57 million.

"He ushered in a very fundamental difference in how people thought about giving," Moran said. "In Canada, I think people had not tended to support universities with private giving in the same way, and Ron really opened their eyes to the importance of it.

"It was like a revolution in fundraising as far as we're concerned," she said.

Daniels and his wife, Joanne Rosen, a human rights lawyer, have four teenage children. The family has been advised to watch director Barry Levinson's films on Baltimore and some directed by John Waters to get a feel for their new home, but to stay away from the HBO series "The Wire," he said.

"This is my third time in Baltimore in my life, so we've got a lot of work to do," Daniels said.

The family plans to live in Nichols House on the Homewood campus, the fourth Hopkins president to choose to live among the undergraduate students.