Johns Hopkins works to bolster intellectual pluralism across the university

For more than a year, Johns Hopkins University and the American Enterprise Institute—a leading center-right think tank based in Washington, D.C.—have been building bridges to facilitate collaborative work between interested scholars in both institutions. This work aims to model intellectual pluralism, convey the importance of rooting teaching and research with implications for the nation's common life in a broad range of points of view, and encourage greater intellectual diversity in the university community.

One example is the Civic Thought Project, which developed in meetings between Johns Hopkins faculty and AEI scholars and will culminate in a two-day conference in Washington, D.C., that brings together professors, policymakers, and philanthropists from throughout the country and across the ideological spectrum. The event, Civic Thought and Practice: The Intellectual Foundations of Citizenship, will focus on how universities can better fulfill their imperative to cultivate engaged and informed citizens. It will be held on May 16-17 at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center and include scholars from more than 50 universities.

Panelists include Danielle Allen, university professor and director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and the Democratic Knowledge Project at Harvard University; Paul Carrese, professor in the School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University; Yuval Levin, director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at AEI; Josiah Ober, Professor of Political Science and Classics at Stanford University and founder of the Stanford Civics Initiative; and Lee Strang, executive director of the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at The Ohio State University. Participants from Johns Hopkins include Chris Celenza, dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences; William Howell, dean of the newly established School of Government and Policy; Dean Moyar, professor of philosophy and vice dean for humanities; Andrew Perrin, SNF Agora professor and chair of sociology; Amy Binder, SNF Agora professor of sociology; and Simon Halliday, assistant professor of economics.

Last month saw the launch of the JHU-AEI Fellowship Exchange Program, a grant program developed over the course of last fall and in a series of salon dinners with JHU faculty and AEI scholars. The Fellowship Exchange Program creates an opportunity for scholars from JHU and AEI to work together on research, teaching, or other projects and to participate in the intellectual life of each other's institutions. More than two dozen JHU faculty from across the university already have reached out to express interest in collaborating with AEI scholars. The deadline for applications is May 30; more information about the program is available on the provost's office website.

Finally, scholars from JHU and AEI have designed a program, the Graduate Student Intellectual Diversity Initiative, that aims to encourage conservative, libertarian and heterodox students and graduates to consider a career in higher education, and to support them in their efforts. The program has begun work with department chairs and other senior faculty members across the country to mentor talented young ideologically heterodox students who are interested in applying for doctoral programs and exploring careers in academia.

"I am truly delighted by our growing partnership with the American Enterprise Institute and its scholars," JHU President Ron Daniels said. "Through this work, Johns Hopkins has a unique opportunity to make sure that we are bringing the broadest range of ideas and perspectives into our academic discourse."

AEI President Robert Doar said: "America needs its great universities, and great universities need to be open to the full range of views and ideas that shape our society. It's an honor for AEI scholars to work with faculty and students at Hopkins and to elevate the quality, deepen the insights, and broaden the scope of work done in both institutions."

These programs were forged in the wake of an October 2023 event at AEI with Daniels, based on his 2021 book, What Universities Owe Democracy. During his remarks, Daniels focused on the longstanding lack of conservative intellectuals being recruited into the ranks of the faculty at American universities, particularly in social science and humanities disciplines. Daniels observed in the book: "Throughout my career, I have seen many brilliant conservative scholars flee the academy for think tanks, where they feel their ideas will be more readily welcomed. This brain drain cannot be healthy for the university. If the professoriate continues to congregate on the political left, it shortchanges conservative and liberal students alike."

AEI scholar Jenna Silber Storey, who has led the development of these programs for AEI, said that she is "grateful for the opportunity to explore with JHU faculty ways in which to build relationships between think-tanks and the academy. The link between society and the university is currently under great pressure—AEI scholars and JHU faculty can help to strengthen that link by bringing into dialogue the different perspectives on political life and approaches to intellectual inquiry characteristic of our two institutions."

For the past several years, Daniels has sought to support the recruitment of conservative intellectuals to Hopkins in a number of different ways, including, in partnership with Dean Celenza, the formation of a heterodox faculty cluster enabling departments in the Krieger School to recruit scholars with demonstrated interest and expertise in conservative theory and perspectives.

The university also appointed, as inaugural dean of the new School of Government and Policy, William Howell, who has been vocal that the school, its faculty, and its curriculum will work to embody from the outset a broad range of viewpoints and perspectives.

"Universities cannot hope to fulfill our truth-seeking mission unless our ideas are being tested and contested from within, among those whose perspectives, experiences, and thoughts broadly differ from one another," Daniels said. "It is my firm belief that rigorous ongoing interaction between colleagues on the political left and right is vital to the intellectual life of our campuses."

This view aligns with the analysis of Steven Teles, professor in the Department of Political Science. Last year, he published an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education that attracted considerable attention and debate in which he discussed ways of reducing barriers to conservative recruitment. In that article, Teles observed that "where conservative faculty are concerned, the facts are beyond dispute: Their numbers are low and continue to fall."

Celenza said: "Our community—our faculty and students—benefit greatly, as does the search for truth, when different perspectives meet in ways that universities are suited for, centering on evidence and argument. I've often noticed that we look different to folks outside the university than we do to ourselves. We have an obligation to reach out and connect. At the same time, my own experience has taught me that academic fields sometimes inculcate unarticulated norms—and this is why the search for truth is invigorated by scholars with heterodox views, provided that these views emerge from evidence and argument."

Added Howell: "The pursuit of truth and the vigorous interrogation of ideas crucially depends upon people from different worldviews, ideological orientations, disciplinary backgrounds, and epistemologies coming together in good faith and with open minds. Too often, surrounding ourselves with facsimiles of ourselves, our thinking grows lazy, our blind spots persist, and our imaginations run fallow. It's crucial that we instantiate multiple forms of difference within our communities. And having done so, we then must put these differences to good use."

Last year, the university also unveiled a suite of programs to nurture the skills and habits of dialogue across different ideas and perspectives throughout the university. These include:

• A partnership with the nonpartisan organization Open to Debate to bring debates among progressive and conservative voices to the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C., and to the university's Homewood campus in Baltimore; the first debate in this series, held in January, focused on the future of the U.S. Supreme Court
• A new grant program to support faculty ideas to incorporate dialogue into the classroom and campus life
• A series of conversations featuring voices from all perspectives discussing the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East
• Plans for programming in residence halls on dialogue skills and related topics