Ronald Joel Daniels (born 1959) is a Canadian academic and the current president of the Johns Hopkins University, a position which he assumed on March 2, 2009. Daniels' tenure in this role has been extended twice, and is currently set to run through 2029. Daniels was previously the vice-president and provost at the University of Pennsylvania, and prior to that was dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Daniels received his B.A. (1982) and J.D. (1986) degrees from the University of Toronto, and his LL.M. (1988) degree from Yale Law School.
In December 2016, Daniels was invested into the Order of Canada at the grade of Member. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018 and is also a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Early career
Daniels was provost and professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and dean and James M. Tory Professor of Law at the University of Toronto, where he was editor in chief of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review. He was also a visiting professor and Coca-Cola World Fellow at Yale Law School, as well as a John M. Olin Visiting Fellow at Cornell Law School. He received a Carnegie Corporation of New York Academic Leadership Award in 2015.
He has advised several Canadian governments on a range of policy issues, including chairing the Ontario Panel of the Future of Government, the Market Design Committee (defining market structure of new competitive electricity markets in Ontario), and the Ontario Government Task Force on Securities Regulation and the Reform of Accounting Standards; he also served on the Toronto Stock Exchange Committee on Corporate Governance in Canada.
Presidency of Johns Hopkins University
Since March 1, 2009, Daniels has served as the 14th president of The Johns Hopkins University. As president, Daniels has continued the university's 38-year legacy of having the most federal research funding in the country. In 2013, Daniels announced the creation of "Ten by Twenty", the university's first comprehensive strategic plan, setting goals for the school through 2020. His Rising to the Challenge campaign, costing $6 billion and ending in 2018, emphasized Daniels' three overarching themes - increasing interdisciplinary collaborative research and innovation, enhancing individual student excellence, and larger social involvement within the Baltimore community. In March 2015, Daniels released the first Ten by Twenty progress report. At the same time, he announced the launch of the Johns Hopkins Idea Lab, a source of crowdsourcing initiatives from the Johns Hopkins community. The Idea Lab was inspired by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory's Ignition Grants. Winners of the Idea Lab competition win $20,000 to support their initiative.
Daniels serves as the chair of the executive committee of Johns Hopkins Medicine – the entity linking the Johns Hopkins Health System and the university’s School of Medicine. He has worked closely with health system leadership through several strategic acquisitions and partnerships across health-related industry sectors.
Daniels has made attempts to strengthen Johns Hopkins' ties to Baltimore with programs such as HopkinsLocal, which hired hundreds of employees from within economically deprived neighborhoods in the city. The University has partnered with several city schools, and helped create the Henderson-Hopkins elementary/middle school, the first new school in East Baltimore built in 20 years. Daniels also secured funding for the renovation of the historic Parkway Theater in the Station North area of the city.