Johns Hopkins extends President Daniels’ contract

Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, has been given a contract extension to lead the school for five more years, the university announced Monday.

The Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve the extension through June 2029. His contract was set to expire in 2024, and is now set to end five years later.

“Over the last 12 years, Ron has led our University with his signature dynamism, imagination and intellect,” wrote Lou Forster, the board’s chair, in a statement.

Extending Daniels’ contract, Forster wrote, signals the university’s “full and unwavering confidence in the trajectory of our institution and its remarkable people ... supported and sustained by President Daniels’ able leadership.”

Daniels took his post in March 2009 as the college’s 14th president.

Under his presidency, Johns Hopkins has expanded its collaboration with city schools, including by establishing the $54-million Henderson Hopkins School in East Baltimore; launching the HopkinsLocal program to support Baltimore businesses in the wake of the 2015 unrest after the death of Freddie Gray from injuries sustained in police custody; and investing in science, technology, engineering and math programs at Margaret

Brent Middle School and Barclay Elementary School.

Daniels also led Johns Hopkins during its controversial plans to establish an armed private police force. The college put the plan on the back burner amid national protests against police brutality last year.

Most recently, Daniels has sought to shed light on the legacy of the college’s namesake after 1850 census records suggested enslaved people lived in the Hopkins household.

He also has said he’s ended the college’s practice of legacy admissions after learning that one in eight newly-admitted students were given preferential treatment due to relatives who are alumni, Daniels wrote in an op-ed in The Atlantic last year.

In 2029, Daniels will be the second longest-tenured president in the university’s history, surpassed only by the first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, who served 26 years from 1875 through 1901.

The extension did not come with a raise, said Jill Rosen, a Johns Hopkins spokeswoman. In 2018, Daniels ranked 18th among the highest paid private college presidents in the U.S., according to the most recent data published by The Chronicle of Higher Education in its annual executive compensation report. He was the 30th highest-paid private university president three years prior.