COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Senate passed a bill to tamp down on perceived liberal bias at state colleges and universities by forcing them to add to their mission statements that they don’t favor or disfavor any political, social or religious beliefs; outlawing the ability of faculty and staff to strike; banning mandated diversity training; and requiring for annual faculty performance evaluations and post-tenure reviews.

Senate Bill 83, called the Higher Education Enhancement Act, passed 21 to 10, largely along party lines. The bill now heads to the Ohio House for consideration.

The House has its own nearly identical measure, House Bill 191, which has received two hearings thus far.

SB 83 has drawn hundreds of opponents to the Ohio Statehouse, and has been significantly amended twice. For instance, part of one of the amendments allows diversity, equity and inclusion training if it’s required under other state or federal laws or regulations – for instance, some federal grants require recipients to have undergone the training – or to comply with licensure requirements. They would have to get permission from the Ohio Department of Higher Education for an exception to the law.

But the critics say the amendments don’t address the basic problem with the bill, which they see as undermining professors and creating mistrust of faculty that “threatens our aspirations to increase the national prominence of our universities and attract the most innovative new scholars,” said Ben Givens on behalf of the Ohio Faculty Council and a psychology professor at Ohio State University.

Across the country, conservatives have accused “liberal faculty of “indoctrinating” impressionable young students. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is backing a bill called the Stop W.O.K.E. Act that prohibits campuses from hiring critical race theory consultants. DeSantis also replaced trustees of a small, public liberal arts college, and they recently denied tenure to five professors deemed as to left-leaning.

“This legislation is an urgently needed course correction for higher education in Ohio,” said Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Kirkland Republican and sponsor of the bill.

He said it’s an opportunity for the legislature can change the direction of higher education. He said that too many professors teach students what to think, not how to think, and that the bill will help reassure parents that their kids will not be indoctrinated and instead schooled in their academic pursuits.

“If we do not act now, I fear we will continue down the path of servitude to a woke agenda from which there may be no return,” Cirino said.

Sen. Rob McColley, a northwest Ohio Republican, said the bill “recenters” higher education on students. He believes faculty have increasingly become more liberal over the past 20 years.

“If people are saying this does not happen, or if this is some kind of myth on college campuses, look at the data. This has been studied time and time again.”

SB 83 applies to public colleges and universities. Private schools that receive state funds were originally included in parts of the bill but a Wednesday amendment removed them. Many private schools that are affiliated with faith organizations said that it would be hard to espouse their religious believes and comply with HB 83.

China prohibition

The bill would prohibit schools from accepting gifts and contributions from the People’ Republic of China or other organization acting on behalf of the Chinese government.

Americans have increasingly become weary of Confucian Institutes, which offer Chinese language courses at U.S. universities. One of the amendments exempted Chinese payment of tuition, student fees and alumni contributions from the ban.

Critics say that this ban could jeopardize scientific research and scholarly collaboration with Chinese professors.

Mission statements

Each state institution must incorporate the following principles into their mission statements: it will educate students by free, open and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth; its duty is to equip students with intellectual skills to reach their own, informed conclusions; its duty is to ensure that the school will not favor or disfavor or prohibit speech or lawful assembly; it’s committed to creating a community that respects the autonomy of each member and tolerates differences in opinion; faculty and staff must be held to equal standards and have equality of opportunity.

Mary Beth Naim of Kirkland, who is part of Third Act Ohio, a group of older Ohioans who advocate for the environment and democracy, said that she’s concerned about this requirement with topics such as climate change. She said that SB 83 that it could encourage non-scientific ideas in the classroom.

“The only true controversy related to climate change is to imply that there is alternate science to these extensively vetted findings,” she testified.

Anti-CRT

The bill requires schools to implement a range of disciplinary actions for any administrator, teacher or other employee who promotes certain concepts about racism and sexism, such as one group is inherently racist or sexist. The language is aimed at banning critical race theory, which is taught in law schools.

Colleges would not be allowed to favor or disfavor anyone based on their race or sex.

Institutions would be prohibited from policies designed to explicitly segregate faculty, staff and students based on their race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, the bill states.

Genevieve Ritchie-Ewing, a sociology and anthropology professor at Central State University, Ohio’s only historically Black public university, said she foresees problems with SB 83 in her classroom.

“This bill will make it virtually impossible for me to teach my students, as almost all of my students are Black or African American and many of the courses we offer are geared toward our student population,” she said. “They see and experience racism in many forms, overt and subtle, every day and want to discuss those experiences in classes designed to allow that. They see the structural racism and sexism in U.S. society in their everyday experiences when others judge them based on persistent stereotypes. To avoid discussing the existence of these societal structures is an enormous disservice to my students.”

Ritchie-Ewing also noted that the modern workforce is diverse, and all students are at a disadvantage when they don’t learn about these topics in college.

American government requirement

The Ohio chancellor of Higher Education must develop a three-hour course on American government or history, with mandatory reading including the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, five essays from the “Federalist Papers,” the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Students seeking bachelor’s degrees must take the course or receive an exemption beginning with those who graduate in the spring of the 2029.

An amendment allowed exceptions in the bill since many students read these documents in high school.

“Guess who was not included in the Constitution? Guess who was not mentioned in the ‘Federalist Papers?’” Sen. Catherine Ingram, a Cincinnati Democrat who is Black, who described sometimes feeling uncomfortable during American history class when she was younger.

Ingram said Black people are not considered in the nation’s oldest documents.

“I continue to hear, ‘The conservatives need a voice,’ ‘the conservatives need a voice,’” she said. “Ohio is gerrymandered so badly, you can’t help but have a voice.”

Syllabus requirement

Professors must post a syllabus or equivalent document for each undergraduate course online to be publicly accessible.

The chancellor for the Ohio Department of Higher Education would have to prepare reports about each school’s compliance with this.

Steven Volk, an Oberlin College emeritus history professor, wrote in his education blog that this could be problematic. Volk’s blog post was first noted by Northeast Ohio public education blogger Jan Resseger.

“A single person, unaffiliated with the university and lacking any qualification, who, while spending his spare time surfing the internet, comes across something in a course syllabus that he finds ‘objectionable,’ will now be able to take his outrage straight to the university’s administration (not to mention Fox News) in an attempt to force the faculty member to change, be harassed, or – better yet — fired,” Volk wrote.

Evaluations of professors

Most colleges and universities regularly evaluate their professors. SB 83 would prescribe new evaluations each year, based on their teaching, research, service to the academy, clinical care if they work at a medical school, and administration if they’re involved in university administration.

Under each area, they’re supposed to be evaluated as “exceeds performance expectations,” “meets performance expectations,” or “does not meet performance expectations,” the bill states.

Also included would be a student evaluation of whether the instructor created a classroom atmosphere free of bias, which would account for at least 50% of the teaching area component of the evaluation.

This could lead to grade inflation, said Sen. Kent Smith, a Euclid Democrat. Professors may give students higher grades than they deserve as a way to ensure they’re not hurt in the student evaluations.

Laura Hancock covers state government and politics for The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.