Straws in the Wind - Part 452

Ronald Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education: We developed the partnership with the American Enterprise Institute. We recognized it was going to take time to see a shift in the recruitment of faculty, but we wanted to move with some dispatch to make sure that our students and faculty were exposed to these ideas. 

The fact that conservative scholarship is underrepresented in our institutions ultimately means that the left gets flabbier because it’s not being tested and challenged in the way it ought to be. At the same time, the right, to the extent that it moves outside the university and finds itself in think tanks and is not subject to challenges or critiques from the center and the left, becomes more radicalized. This is not just a problem for our institutions. It’s a problem for America. So I do feel urgency in trying to remedy this issue. It was my colleague Steve Teles, who wrote in The Chronicle about this, who said he was hard pressed to identify a single tenured conservative scholar in the social sciences and humanities at Hopkins. I took that as a very serious critique.

Interviewer: A recent article about various political-diversity initiatives at Hopkins describes the university under your leadership as being on “an ambitious and uncharted journey to transform itself into a citadel of ideological pluralism.”

Daniels: I take it as a compliment. That’s something that I proudly embrace...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/conservative-scholars-are-rare-johns-hopkins-wants-more-of-them. 

Defense Audit

From DefenseScoop: Defense Department leaders instructed 30 American universities and specialized technology institutes to immediately audit their academic, financial and research connections to foreign entities that the government considers too risky or hostile to engage with. The initiation of these probes, revealed [last] Monday, marks DOD’s latest move in a yearslong effort to counter what it views as adversarial influences infiltrating U.S. academia...

Full story at https://defensescoop.com/2026/08/17/pentagon-probes-30-u-s-academic-institutions-for-potential-ties-to-adversaries/.

The institutions - which include UCLA, UC-Berkeley, and UC-San Diego - are:

Bryant University, Cornell University, Drake University, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Northeastern State University-Tahlequah, Oklahoma State University, Penn State University, Portland State University, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, Stony Brook University, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-San Diego, University of Cincinnati, University of Delaware, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of South Carolina, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

Straws in the Wind - Part 432

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: The Department of Education’s... letter outlining principles for “every postsecondary institution” in the country was a bombshell for two reasons. One: The Trump administration was asking college presidents to sign onto its overarching vision for the sector. Two: Several prominent higher-ed leaders were reported to have helped draft it. The Association of American Universities was reportedly the primary partner... Douglas A. Girod, chancellor of the University of Kansas, was supposed to have been another major player. The very idea caused “great consternation to the KU faculty,” said Ronald M. Barrett-Gonzalez, a professor of aerospace engineering there.

...Andrew D. Martin, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, issued a statement saying: “For several months, I have participated in broader discussions with the White House and other higher-education leaders about issues affecting the sector. I expect those conversations helped inform the administration’s thinking around their Monday letter. I was not involved, however, in the drafting of the letter.” ...In an interview with The Chronicle, Barbara R. Snyder, president of the AAU, described a complicated feedback process with the Trump administration in which AAU representatives had little control over drafts. She, Girod, and Ronald J. Daniels, president of the Johns Hopkins University, met with officials from the Education Department and the White House two or three times in person and a couple of times over the phone, she said. Girod and Daniels were acting in their capacity as chair and vice chair of AAU’s board. They always met with Trump officials as a group of three, Snyder said.

They provided feedback on drafts, which they did not receive copies of. They were allowed to see them only during the meetings. Without access to past drafts, Snyder said she couldn’t exactly recall what changed over the course of their meetings, but she said: “The first draft we saw was already quite different from the compact, and the final draft is quite different from the first draft. Did they listen to some of our suggestions? Yes. Did they take all of our suggestions? No.” Asked if Snyder’s description of the meetings was accurate, a spokesperson for the Education Department answered with a short statement: “We appreciate the candid dialogue with bold university leaders who are helping refocus higher education on its foundational commitment to academic excellence.” ...

Full story at https://www.chronicle.com/article/college-leaders-play-down-their-involvement-in-compact-2-0. 

UC & Other Universities Support Harvard

From The Dartmouth: [Dartmouth] signed onto an amicus brief filed July 22 with the First Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Harvard University’s April lawsuit against the Trump Administration. Thirty-five other colleges and universities also signed the brief, including all Ivy League universities except Harvard. In the ongoing case, the Trump administration is appealing a September 2025 ruling in favor of Harvard after the administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants because the university refused to comply with federal demands to make institutional changes such as reforming admissions and hiring practices, shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion practices and addressing antisemitism “or other bias” in campus programs. 

The brief argues that “even temporary cuts” to federal research funding could have “permanent effects” which “endangers” the “life-changing and history-altering innovations” that arise from “basic research” conducted at colleges and universities... Amici institutions listed advancements in “scientific progress” made possible by federal funding — such as the computer, DNA sequencing, the pacemaker and the “decades-long collaboration among academia, government and industry” which produced the internet — as “enormous long-term benefits” of university research...

Full story at https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2026/08/flavin-dartmouth-signs-brief-in-support-of-harvard-in-research-funding-lawsuit-against-trump-administration. 

List in image above and brief at:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca1.53667/gov.uscourts.ca1.53667.00108480602.0.pdf.

Straws in the Wind - Part 429

From the Washington Post: After Johns Hopkins University public health researcher Fatima Ameaka was detained by immigration authorities as she boarded a domestic flight [last] Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said she had overstayed her visa “in violation of our nation’s laws.” Ameaka’s lawyer, Benjamin Osorio, said that claim is “not true,” citing immigration documents he says buttress his client’s case. Ameaka — a native of Cameroon whose Hopkins colleagues have praised for her work advancing public health — was transported from Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport to ICE facilities in Virginia, Louisiana and Texas before being released late [last] Friday.

Her case shows how the Trump administration has begun using domestic air travel and alleged visa violations by foreign nationals as a way to step up deportations around the country... Ameaka, 31, entered the U.S. legally in June 2023 on a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a master’s in public health. Her Fulbright ended in June 2024 and she was hired as a research associate at the university in September of that year, according to her LinkedIn profile and interviews with her colleagues. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, where Ameaka was employed, said she came to the U.S. for a “Fulbright degree, and then stayed on with a visa to work in our center.” A copy of an employment authorization document, provided by her lawyer, shows it expiring in December 2029...

Full story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/08/01/johns-hopkins-health-researcher-released-after-airport-ice-detention/.