Conservatives who want more influence in higher education have a surprising new ally: the president of an elite university.

Ron Daniels, president of the Johns Hopkins University, has invested more than a year into a collaboration with the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, to recruit conservative voices into academia. So far, the collaboration has produced a two-day conference in Washington, D.C.; a fellowship exchange for research and teaching collaboration; and a program to recruit and support conservative graduates in careers in higher education.

The venture comes amid growing tensions between colleges and the American right. President Donald Trump’s administration has stripped universities of billions in federal funding for research (Hopkins itself is facing hundreds of millions in losses), pondered changing accreditation systems and favors raising the endowment tax.

The institute does not endorse political candidates and has occasionally criticized the Trump administration. But the administration has hired former institute employees, and some of the institute’s senior fellows have published articles criticizing financial aid, advocating for ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and cutting off federal funding for colleges.

Those positions are unusual in academia, which skews more left-leaning than most professions. Half of all professors who responded to one 2022 survey identified as liberal; just 26% identified as conservative.

“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,” Daniels wrote in his 2021 book, “What Universities Owe Democracy." ”This brain drain cannot be healthy for the university."

Daniels’ book helped spur the collaboration, which was announced in April, said Jenna Silber Storey, a senior fellow at the institute.

“Johns Hopkins has been very willing,” she said. “This project has strong institutional support.”

The partnership’s Graduate Student Intellectual Diversity Initiative “aims to encourage conservative, libertarian and heterodox students and graduates to consider a career in higher education.”

The initiative supports students through the job search process, and leaders have already begun to work with department chairs and senior faculty across the country, including those at Harvard and Princeton universities, to recruit qualified students into doctoral programs.

The program is focused on providing “intellectual mentorship” so students feel supported in joining the academy, said Hahrie Han, director of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute at Hopkins.

“I’ve been pleased by the robust levels of enthusiasm and support that we’re getting from faculty both at Hopkins and elsewhere,” she said. “There’s a real appetite for these kinds of projects.”

Storey, of the institute, said universities have begun reaching out to her about the programming.

“I’ve heard from a lot of other universities since the collaboration has been announced,” she said. “They’re very interested in what we’re doing.”

The partnership also formed JHU-AEI Fellowship Exchange Program, an opportunity for scholars from the university and the think tank to work together on research, teaching or other projects.

The exchange program was developed during a series of salon dinners that Hopkins faculty had with institute scholars, and according to the university, more than two-dozen faculty members have expressed interest in the collaboration.

Hopkins is “really serious about finding creative ways that bring about more viewpoint diversity,” Storey said.

Under Daniels’ leadership, Hopkins has made a number of other pushes to add conservative voices to the university. Daniels created faculty groups to help departments at the university recruit scholars with “demonstrated interest and expertise in conservative theory and perspectives.”

These programs will help higher education with the “pursuit of truth,” Han said.

“We know from decades of research that no matter who you are, we all have cognitive biases,” she said. “That’s why it’s so important to have a diversity of viewpoints.”

The long-term goal, she added, is that the programs disappear.

“It would be great if we didn’t have a program that specifically is about trying to diversify the graduate student pipeline,” she said. “We want a program that becomes so effective that it’s no longer necessary.”

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.