Former U. S. Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland has donated his political papers to Johns Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries and University Museums.
According to The Hub, the university’s news source, the materials span nearly 60 years of Cardin’s career as a legislator. He became Maryland’s senior U. S. senator on Jan. 3, 2017, when Barbara Mikulski retired. He retired on Jan. 3, 2025, and was succeeded by Angela Alsobrooks, the first African American and second woman to represent Maryland in the Senate.
Cardin’s donation was celebrated last month during a luncheon at Evergreen Carriage House.
“I thank the Sheridan Libraries and University Museums for their efforts to ensure the tools to learn about our history are widely accessible,” Cardin, 81, said during the luncheon, according to The Hub. “It is so important that everyone — young people especially — understand history and learn the importance of civic engagement. Johns Hopkins is making this possible.”
The Cardin collection includes 255 boxes of physical material and 2.8 terabytes of digital material – about 2.8 trillion bytes — spanning his time in the Maryland House of Delegates, his years in the U.S. House of Representatives and his three terms as a U.S. senator. The majority of the collection pertains to his Senate career from 2007 to 2024.
While in the Senate, Cardin was a strong advocate for health care and retirement savings, environmental protection, foreign relations, civil and human rights, small businesses and the federal workforce. According to The Hub, topics mentioned in his collection include the impeachment of Judge Walter Nixon; the U.S. House of Representatives’ ethics investigation of Newt Gingrich; the U.S. Helsinki Commission; the Magnitsky Act; President Donald Trump’s impeachment trials; and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In contrast to the records preserved by the federal government, a representative’s correspondence with constituents, memos, speeches, draft legislation, etc. are legally considered personal property — and it is up to them to decide what to do with them once they retire,” Katie Carey, curator of the University Archives, told The Hub.
“The materials in a collection like this can add nuance, context, and lived experience to the broader historical narrative. By choosing to donate their papers to…a university archive, these representatives are providing opportunities for these collections to serve as dynamic educational tools that archivists and professors can use to bring this civic history to life.”
Hopkins also has Mikulski’s archives as well as those of former U.S. Senators Paul Sarbanes and Charles “Mac” Mathias, former U.S. Rep. Clarence Long, and other elected officials. The Cardin collection is being processed and will be open to researchers in 2028.
“Hopkins has been investing in the study and practice of civic engagement, policy-making, and robust dialog as cornerstones of global democracy — from the SNF Agora Institute to the new School of Government and Policy — and the Sheridan Libraries are building collections that support these initiatives,” said Elisabeth Long, dean of the Sheridan Libraries and University Museums, according to The Hub.
“These archives give researchers insights into how government works in practice,” Long said. “We are especially excited that Sen. Cardin has agreed for the majority of his papers to be openly available to researchers — with only some exceptions which must legally be kept private for a proscribed period of time.”
