As Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives are facing threats on a national scale, the recently introduced Senate Bill 1 creates an unsure future for these measures on the state level.
According to Ohio Senate News, “Senate Bill 1 bans Diversity, Equity and Inclusion courses, training, litmus tests, required statements and spending for any DEI initiatives or programs with the same intent.” The bill also includes provisions banning faculty strikes and generally undermines the academic freedom of students and faculty statewide.
“To me, this isn’t a political issue,” Cassidy Brauner, a professor of instruction at the School of Art and Design, said. “I think no matter what your political position is, everyone should be really afraid of this. I think it’s the beginning of a really scary way of looking at education.”
Brauner participates in the Ohio University chapter of the American Association of University Professors, led by chapter president John O’Keefe, an associate professor of history at the Chillicothe campus. The organization serves as both a faculty advocacy group and the faculty union.
“We’re very concerned about the bill as a whole,” O’Keefe said. “We strongly oppose the provision that prevents faculty from going on strike and we also oppose the provisions related to eliminating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on campus … the people who need unions the most are often people who might be facing discrimination in other ways.”
This intersection of stipulations within the bill has caused a variety of concerns across departments. As an associate professor of English, Joe McLaughlin teaches students studying to become high school teachers who are concerned with censorship and book banning. Meanwhile, Nicholas Stroup, an assistant professor of higher education and student affairs, teaches graduate students who are concerned with the future of higher education as a whole.
“We’ve seen so many waves of contestation about what higher education should be, who it should be for, what should be included,” Stroup said. “... my students are primarily graduate students who are going to be administrators, so they are really looking at the integrity of a higher education institution's mission.”
Stroup teaches a seminar in the College of Education called Diversity in American Higher Education, a class on which the bill would certainly have an impact on if passed.
“This is the question of the semester,” Stroup said. “Is this class going to be legal by the time the semester comes to an end?”
A variety of different departments are currently asking similar questions, as the potential impacts of the bill have yet to reveal themselves.
“If Senate Bill 1 passes, we know what it says,” McLaughlin said. “But the devil is in the details of what the surveillance and enforcement mechanisms are going to be.”
Brauner finds the details of the bill difficult to understand, describing it as a hypocritical piece of the legislature at its core.
“Some of the points in the document are impossible to follow,” she said. “They say they are encouraging … intellectual diversity, but at the same time bans anyone from discussing bias.”
Both Brauner and McLaughlin are concerned about the totalitarian themes in the bill and the resulting overreach of government in the university system.
“While I’m mostly concerned about the academic freedom issues … I am very concerned about the massive enforcement bureaucracy that is going to have to be created as a result of Senate Bill 1,” McLaughlin said.
In order to make predictions about the potential wave of changes to higher education in Ohio, Stroup has been looking to other states that have already implemented similar legislation and begun to experience that bureaucratic influence.
“We have the templates from about 15 to 20 other states that all have … legislation like this that have passed, and what we see is the alignment between what is on the books and … the ways the states have gone about shifting their higher education practices really depend on the local, state and national contexts,” Stroup said.
The local contexts will largely be affected by how students and faculty oppose the bill in the coming weeks. While Brauner believes students should educate themselves and be outraged by the assumption of indoctrination taking place in classrooms, McLaughlin is curious to see the response from upper-level faculty.
“We don’t doubt that our academic leaders, our president and provosts, share our values on these things,” McLaughlin said. “The question is, when they get put in the very difficult position of weighing those values against … threats that are going to come from on high, whether they’re going to have the courage to stick up for what’s right or are they going to bend the knee.”
The future of the bill is soon to be seen. Until the bill is voted on, the AAUP will continue coordinating oppositional efforts statewide, and student protests have already begun taking place in the state capital.
“We have been urging everyone to call their state representatives and to also call the governor’s office,” O’Keefe said. “This bill is being fast-tracked … so it’s very important for people to turn out and express their opposition to their elected officials.”
