Republican governors this spring have signed into law a wave of legislation targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, tenure, and struggling academic programs as part of a concerted effort to remake the landscape of higher education.
The legislation has already spurred college leaders to make a variety of changes to student programming and degree offerings.
“It fits into a picture with many, many aspects of attempts to control higher education and intellectual and academic freedom,” said Risa Lieberwitz, a professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University and a member of the American Association of University Professors’ committee on academic freedom and tenure.
Here are some highlights from this year’s legislative session.
Further Attacks on DEI
Legislatures in Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, and Wyoming passed bills targeting explicit and implicit efforts to recruit and retain faculty and staff from historically marginalized communities.
Wyoming’s Legislature banned DEI-related programs, activities, policies, and training. Kentucky’s General Assembly prohibited colleges from having DEI offices, DEI officers, diversity training, diversity statements, and race-conscious preferences in hiring and admissions.
Lawmakers in Arkansas passed the ACCESS Act, which forbids public colleges from requiring diversity statements and prohibits higher-education accreditors from collecting information from the state’s public colleges related to DEI, or basing an accreditation decision on reviews of DEI.
Ohio’s Senate Bill 1, the “Advance Ohio Education Act,” abolishes diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and programs.
It also takes aim at what is taught in the classroom. Under the law, colleges cannot endorse or oppose “any controversial belief or policy,” including issues like climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.
Several colleges have published websites to inform their campuses about updates on compliance with state and federal legislation.
Ohio State University said in a statement that they advocated for changes to the bill throughout the legislative process that would “preserve and enhance academic freedom, embrace diversity of thought, and foster civil discourse on campuses where all individuals feel welcomed and respected.”
Ohio State’s Frank W. Hale, Jr. Black Cultural Center will remain open.
“The university had hoped for more,” the university said.
Taking Aim at Tenure
Legislatures have also targeted colleges’ faculty-tenure process with new measures.
Kentucky now requires faculty members and college presidents to be evaluated for productivity and performance at least once every four years. The evaluation process will be established by each college’s board of trustees.
North Dakota mandates that the state’s public colleges develop a new policy for review of tenured and non-tenure-track faculty.
Tenured faculty in Arkansas are now to be evaluated annually. Administrators can call for an “immediate review” of tenured faculty positions at any time.
Lieberwitz, the Cornell professor, said the new laws targeting tenure undermine faculty’s job security and their ability to exercise their academic freedom.
“The whole picture is one where the agenda, a very right-wing agenda, is to control higher-education institutions and to control the faculty and what faculty teach and research and speak about,” Lieberwitz said. “One way to do that is to attack job security. Another way to do that is to attack what you teach directly.”
Overhauling Academic Programs
Legislation in Utah and Ohio directs colleges to more closely align their academic programs with the work force’s needs and halt admissions to programs with low enrollment or low graduation rates.
In January, Utah’s Legislature cut $60 million in funding from its state’s public colleges. Colleges can restore that funding by presenting plans to direct the money toward “statewide work-force demands,” the legislation states.
The University of Utah, for example, can restore its nearly $20-million cut once its reallocation plans are approved by the Utah Board of Higher Education, according to the university.
Harriet Hopf, president of the University of Utah’s Academic Senate, described the legislative changes as “disruptive.” The Academic Senate already assesses academic programs yearly, she pointed out.
“There will be changes to the structure of the university, but they will happen through our normal process,” Hopf said. “They’re probably at a faster pace in this position because there’s certainly more pressure, but we aren’t doing anything drastic at the moment.”
Ohio’s SB1 also requires universities to eliminate programs that have produced fewer than five graduates annually over a three-year period.
The University of Toledo said it would suspend admission to nine undergraduate programs and 12 graduate programs including Africana studies, Asian studies, data analytics, disability studies, Middle East studies, philosophy, religious studies, Spanish, and women and gender studies.
State Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Republican who sponsored Ohio’s Senate Bill 1, said “The main thrust is to make sure that we secure an ongoing environment of diversity of thought on our campuses.”
