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Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels led the charge to eliminate legacy admissions at JHU, with the help of a $1.8 billion gift from Michael R. Bloomberg, a member of the Homewood class of 1964, to support undergraduate financial aid. The effect? “It’s simple: It’s opened up a lot more space for us to be able to recruit students from a host of different backgrounds,” Daniels says. NBC Nightly...

By Ron Daniels, JD, LLM1; Victor Dzau, MD2Throughout the past 2 decades, numerous commissions, task forces, and study groups have grappled with the challenges confronting the next generation of scientists in the US biomedical research enterprise. Yet, the challenges remain largely unaddressed. A declining percentage of grants are going to young scientists, who may spend many years in postdoctoral positions...

The minivan is passing through a scene that typifies urban decay, Baltimore-style: blocks of modest rowhouses, where some dwellings are inhabited, others are boarded up or abandoned to the elements, and some blocks are entirely vacant, studded with empty lots. “This was east Baltimore,” says Ron Daniels, an affable scholar of law and political science whose accent betrays his Canadian roots, and who since 2009...

By Jennifer Schuessler The quants and their algorithms may have taken over Wall Street. But one investment legend is making a big bet on a more old-fashioned mode of analysis: philosophy. Bill Miller, the value investor who famously beat the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index for 15 consecutive years (and whose faith in bank stocks later won a mocking depiction in the movie “The Big Short”), has donated $75...

Ron Daniels, 58, of Toronto, became president of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University in 2009. He is a professor in its department of political science and in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. In its RCMP uniform, my (1.5-metre-tall) moose sits by a window; every so often students ask what it’s doing in the president’s office. My wife and kids got me a Toronto Maple Leafs’ jersey so we...

Johns Hopkins University will use a $150 million gift to create an institute geared toward improving civic discourse and engagement, an effort that comes at a time of increased political tensions and polarization. Hopkins, a private university in Baltimore, announced plans for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute earlier this month. At the institute, experts will look at the “dynamics of societal...

Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Health System have hired hundreds of workers from distressed Baltimore neighborhoods through an initiative announced after the 2015 riots that aims to strengthen the local economy, officials said Thursday. There were 304 workers hired in the first year of an effort known as HopkinsLocal, according to a new progress report. Through...

Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania deploy a host of financial and intellectual resources to help locals build richer, healthier, more inclusive cities. Read more at Times Higher Education

Applied research A university tries to take on the social problems that surround it BISHOP DOUGLAS MILES of Koinonia Baptist Church, in Baltimore, used to be embarrassed to be a Johns Hopkins alumnus. A girl once stopped talking to him when she found out where he studied. Other residents recall being told by their elders to run past Johns Hopkins in case they were kidnapped by the research hospital for experiments. The...

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels discussed the future of public universities earlier this month on the final day of the annual Aspen Ideas Festival, calling attention to the increasing strain being put on state schools in the U.S. by governance, politics, and funding cuts. Daniels spoke with New York Times journalist David Leonhardt about the need to protect funding for public universities...