A set of sweeping higher-education reforms in Ohio’s nearly finalized two-year budget has put campus administrators, faculty, and students across the state on high alert this week.
The proposal, known as Senate Bill 83, is one of many Republican-driven bills across the country aimed at limiting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at public colleges, although only a few have resulted in new state laws. But the Ohio legislation goes even further by taking aim at labor unions, ties to China, and addressing concerns about intellectual diversity all at once.
And in an unusual display of public opposition, higher-ed leaders across the state have forcefully spoken out against the bill. College presidents typically haven’t taken positions on pending legislation.
The reforms in question have been folded into the Ohio budget proposal verbatim from the Senate bill sponsored by state Sen. Jerry C. Cirino, a Republican. If approved, the budget language would ban diversity training and the use of diversity statements in hiring and admissions at Ohio’s public colleges, as well as limit faculty-union rights, create a stringent post-tenure review process for faculty, ban funding from China, and require students to take American history courses to graduate, among other things.
The bill passed the Senate earlier this month; the House is now debating Cirino’s amendments while the budget sits in committee. The current budget’s term ends on Friday, and the governor is urging the legislature to pass the new one before the deadline.
When SB 83 came up for a hearing in April, the discussion went on for seven hours as hundreds of students, faculty, and administrators spoke on how the bill would transform the state’s postsecondary system.
The Board of Trustees at Ohio State University, whose 60,000-student Columbus campus is the third largest in the nation, expressed strong opposition to the proposal in May.
“We acknowledge the issues raised by this proposal but believe there are alternative solutions that will not undermine the shared governance model of universities, risk weakened academic rigor, or impose extensive and expensive new reporting mandates,” the board’s statement said.
The presidents of the University of Cincinnati and Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, also issued public statements against the bill in May. The Inter-University Council of Ohio, a voluntary association of the state’s public universities, issued an open letter to Cirino voicing concerns about vague language, government overreach, and potential costs of the proposed reforms in the bill.
Pranav Jani, a professor of English at Ohio State and president of the Ohio State faculty union, wrote a Columbus Dispatch op-ed in March in which he compared SB 83’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion to similar reforms underway in Florida. Florida has since passed a law banning diversity spending at public colleges.
Cirino wrote in response that critics were wrong about what the bill was going to do to the curriculum and the state’s campuses.
“The bill does not ban ANY courses,” Cirino wrote. “What it bans is any oath of allegiance to woke ideology on controversial topics.” Cirino could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
John McNay, a professor of history at the University of Cincinnati at Blue Ash and past president of the AAUP Ohio Conference, said opponents of the bill, including faculty-union leaders, are continuing to reach out to legislators in hopes that they’ll vote down SB 83. He’s most concerned about how the bill could affect academic freedom for Ohio faculty, as well as their right to strike as public employees, which the bill would terminate.
It’s not the first time that Republicans in the Ohio legislature have taken aim at labor rights, McNay said. A 2011 attempt to ban faculty unions in Ohio was defeated by a ballot referendum.
“So now it looks to us like they’re going in for another bite at the apple,” he said.
