An Ohio bill banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at public colleges is back and more expansive than ever. The Ohio Legislature began hearings on Wednesday for Senate Bill 1, the “Advance Ohio Higher Education Act,” which revives the widely criticized Senate Bill 83 that failed to pass the House last year.
The new bill proposes to overhaul Ohio’s public higher-education institutions, granting greater governmental oversight over colleges and threatening their funding if they don’t comply. In particular, it takes aim at what happens in the classroom.
One such provision concerns “controversial beliefs or policies.” Institutions would be required to assure that faculty and staff members will “allow and encourage students to reach their own conclusions” on such matters and “not seek to indoctrinate any social, political, or religious point of view.”
The bill gives examples of some of the subjects it deems controversial: climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, and abortion.
Faculty members would also be expected to commit to expressing intellectual diversity, and to allow it to be expressed by others. Intellectual diversity is defined as “multiple, divergent, and varied perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues.”
Of particular concern to faculty members is the bill’s granting of greater governmental oversight over administrations and departments. While both the previous version of the bill and the new one would require public colleges to publish each course’s syllabus online, the new bill goes a step further and calls for including the instructor’s qualifications, contact information, and course schedule in public materials.
Sara Kilpatrick, executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), said in an interview that the requirement to publish detailed course syllabi could lead to intellectual-property issues and “invite faculty harassment.”
Pranav Jani, an associate professor of English at Ohio State University and president of the Ohio State chapter of the AAUP, said political motivations by politicians seek “to establish conservative ideas” in the classroom.
“[Conservatives] are actually afraid of the spectrum of ideas that are OK to talk about in university settings. If they weren’t afraid of those things, they wouldn’t try to limit them, which is what they’re doing,” Jani said. “So how can you say, on the one hand, that we want intellectual diversity and all ideas to be given a clear hearing, and on the other hand, say we’re going to ban DEI programs and we’re going to put so-called controversial topics under our microscope?”
“It’s a fundamental contradiction,” he added.
The bill would also require public institutions to develop a course about American civic literacy. Colleges would be obligated to require students to read the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, at least five essays from the Federalist Papers, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. SB 83 called for a similar reading list to be part of a mandated three-credit course in American government or American history.
Similar, but Different
SB 1 was introduced last week by Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Republican who first introduced SB 83 in March 2023. Cirino has been outspoken against DEI, describing it as “indoctrination.”
Though the bill appears to be a top priority for Ohio lawmakers, Kilpatrick said she doesn’t think this is what constituents want.
“It’s mind-boggling that this is Senate Bill 1,” Kilpatrick said, adding that people in Ohio are worried about food costs and property-tax increases. “And instead, the Senate majority in Ohio has said, ‘We want to play culture-war education politics again, because we couldn’t get it done last time.’”
Similar to SB 83, the new bill would institute a post-tenure review policy for faculty. The trustees of each public college would be required to enact faculty performance reviews, develop a post-tenure review process, and include a provision to prevent faculty unions from negotiating tenure. The moves would effectively “render tenure meaningless,” Kilpatrick said. Full-time faculty members would also be barred from striking.
“Tenure would still exist on paper, but the bill is worded in such a way that certain administrators could call for post-tenure review at any time and fire faculty, and that’s not real tenure,” Kilpatrick said. “We are worried about how that could be used to invite political interference.”
SB 1 would also ban diversity, equity, and inclusion orientation and training programs, and eliminate new and existing DEI offices. In sweeping yet unspecific language, the law would also forbid referencing DEI in job descriptions, and bar establishing new institutional scholarships that “use diversity, equity, and inclusion in any manner.” Existing scholarships would be required to eliminate DEI requirements.
Unlike many similar bills, the Ohio legislation explicitly tries to prevent colleges from trying to move DEI efforts into different offices with different names. SB 1 would ban colleges from replacing an orientation, training, office, or position “under a different designation that serves the same or similar purposes, or that uses the same or similar means.”
Institutions would also be banned from contracting with third-party consultants for hiring processes “whose role is or would be to promote admissions, hiring, or promotion on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
The Hearing, and Protests
At the Senate hearing of the Higher Education Committee on Wednesday, legislators listened to testimony in favor of advancing SB 1 while dozens of student protesters sat in the audience. Cirino was the first legislator to testify in favor. Sen. Casey Weinstein, a Democrat, raised concerns about how the bill “dilutes the truth.” When questioned by Weinstein, Cirino said the bill “relates more to institutional neutrality.” (The bill states that institutions will declare that they won’t endorse or oppose “any controversial belief or policy, except on matters that directly impact the institution’s funding or mission.”)
Cirino characterized DEI as “institutionalized discrimination,” which the bill intends to correct, he said.
Sen. Catherine Ingram, a Democrat, questioned Cirino about the costs the bill would impose on universities, including new training for boards of trustees and the civic-education course requirement.
“Think about it for a second. Ohio State spends $14 million-plus a year on DEI. They never came to us for an appropriation for that. They just found the money to do it,” Cirino responded. “Well, if there’s an incremental cost associated with being a better university, I’m sure they will find the money we don’t have to appropriate.”
The Chronicle reached out to 10 public universities about preparations for complying with the bill.
“We are reviewing the legislation. As always, we look forward to working with elected officials on both sides of the aisle to advance Ohio State and ensure our students, faculty and staff have the resources and support needed to succeed,” Benjamin Johnson, an Ohio State spokesperson, wrote to The Chronicle.
Some universities are already reviewing ways to reform their campuses should the bill come to pass. The University of Akron is “currently conducting a holistic review of campus to identify areas that may require adjustments should the bill pass,” according to Tammy Ewin, the university’s spokesperson.
Students and faculty members spent months protesting SB 83 and negotiated with lawmakers to limit the restrictions the bill sought to enact. Now, similar groups are organizing to protest SB 1.
Sydney Ball, a senior at Ohio State and president of the Ohio Student Association, described the bill as “an attack on higher education.”
“Because it really is just limiting and controlling the language we can use in the classroom,” Ball said, “when these are spaces that should be able to dive deeper.”
