A Republican-backed bill that sought to combat what conservatives view as liberal ideology in higher education in Ohio is back, as the sponsor repeatedly promised it would be when it didn’t get through the House last year. And he said he's not planning on making changes to it like he did last session.
What was Senate Bill 83 is now Senate Bill 1.
"It's called Senate Bill 1 for a reason. It is our top priority," said Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland). "We're going to move this along quickly."
The bill includes several elements that were in SB 83:
- a ban on most diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, with exceptions for those with federal grants attached
- a ban on faculty strikes
- shorter trustee terms, from nine years to six years
- a performance review process for faculty, including those with tenure
- a ban on universities publicly taking positions for or against "controversial beliefs or policies"
- a required civics course that includes "American history, key foundational documents and the fundamentals of free market capitalism"
- "fiscal transparency" from universities in the form of five-year cost summaries for both the operating budget and capital budget
- a ban on financial partnerships with China, not including tuition from Chinese students
- a requirement that syllabi be published online in various accessible sites
It also adds a review by the chancellor of the possibility of three-year bachelor's degrees for some courses of study.
"There are massively disruptive changes going on in higher education around the country," Cirino said, adding that without these proposed changes,"what we have then is indoctrination and or self-censorship, which we know is has been on the rise for the last five years, big time."
Cirino announced the details of the bill along with Senate Education Committee chair Kristina Roegner (R-Hudson) and Rep. Tom Young (R-Washington Twp.), who's sponsoring a companion bill in the House. Student protestors chanted loudly outside the room, and at one point Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers asked them to move the demonstration out of the hallway.
Protestors who were opposed before are back, too
"I'm calling it the zombie bill. It died in December of 2024," said Pranav Jani, an associate professor of English at Ohio State and the president of the Ohio State chapter of the Association of American University Professors. "Now it's being resuscitated and people are angry. We're representing faculty and students who really don't want to see this bill."
Jani added that the idea that professors are indoctrinating students is a myth.
"Our Ohio students are smart and sophisticated. They want to know what your views are. They actually don't want you to be neutral," Jani said. "And as we deliver repeatedly, their grades are not dependent on whether they agree with us. Their grades are dependent on their ability to write, to think critically, to research widely, and really consider for themselves what it is they think."
"It limits the language that we can use. They're basically saying that anything that is controversial or could be could have two sides to it," said Sydney Ball with the Ohio Student Association." "For example, they said in the past that the Holocaust should be taught on both sides, which is insane and very fascist to say. There shouldn't be room for students to say that the Holocaust has never happened or that the Nazis were correct."
When asked about that specific example, Cirino called Holocaust deniers "nuts" and said professors and other students can debate deniers and explain the evidence. But he said that they shouldn't be shouted down.
"Colleges are there to teach students to arrive at the truth. They should be teaching them how to seek the truth, how to analyze all of the various inputs and the facts and to come to their own conclusion," Cirino said. "Teaching them about a specific concept that you must believe in—that becomes indoctrination, and that is not what our campuses should be doing.”
But like SB 83, SB 1 has the potential to bring criticism from other corners too.
"It was pretty astonishing to see some of the anti-strike provisions come back," said Christopher McKnight Nichols, a history professor at Ohio State. "One of the things we saw with SB 83 was, you saw pipefitters, you saw police unions, lots of people didn't like these attacks on union organizing, collective bargaining and that sort of thing. I think that's likely to have much more widespread ramifications than just higher ed."
SB 1 adds university faculty to the list of public employees who can't strike, which includes as law enforcement and corrections officers. It also bans using the post-tenure review process and university cost-cutting in union negotiations.
"This section of the bill is not anti-labor at all. There's plenty of ways that differences of opinion can be resolved," Cirino said, adding that faculty members are critically important. "They are there to serve the students and to give the students the right kind of education." He said he was open to compromising if "unintended consequences" come up, but he won't consider taking the faculty strikes ban or other major components out.
Sponsor says many critics are "uninformed" or have made up their minds
Cirino also said some of the protestors "are probably getting extra credit for being here“—a charge they loudly denied. He added in a later interview, "I think in some of these issues, they're just simply either uninformed or they've already made up their mind and they're simply not open to seeing anything good in the bill."
Five Ohio universities have "independent civic centers" that were created by a 2023 bill sponsored by Cirino and funded with $24 million in the two-year state budget. The centers each have several conservative scholars on their boards. Cirino said diversity of thought is still represented on those boards, "but I think it's coincidental that some of the folks who are naturally attracted to a center like this, a civic center, tend to be more conservative by nature. But we have not stacked the deck."
Cirino said SB 1 is needed to set state policy for universities, which those civic centers can't do. And he said there is an enforcement mechanism should universities not comply if the law passes—which seems likely, since both House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) and Senate President Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) supported SB 83.
"If universities and their trustees want to violate revised code, they're welcome to try to do that. We do, however, have the power of the purse," Cirino said, adding he doesn't expect that.
Hearings on SB 1 could start next week.
