SB1 Is the Death of Higher Education in Ohio

As of March 28th, SB1 has been signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine. The situation is pretty depressing from the perspective of someone in higher education in Ohio, but we'll keep fighting! What Is SB1? SB1 is short for Senate Bill 1, and it was a piece of legislation that was put together earlier this year to target higher education. If you'd like to take a look at the bill directly, you can check it out on Ohio's legislation website. In short, it's a billed titled, "Enact Advance Ohio Higher Education Act." In it, you will find a list of changes made to higher education law, such as: A ban on all DEI programs and offices A ban on DEI scholarships and DEI funding A ban on faculty strikes A ban on taking positions on controversial topics, such as climate change, foreign policy, marriage, and ICE A ban on small educational degree programs offering fewer than five degrees a year A requirement of students to take an American Civics course When listing these out, I intentionally used the word "ban" and "requirement" to show how these policies further restrict higher education. Any argument by conservatives to frame these changes as positives for anyone but an increasingly authoritarian state is delusional. For everyone else, these changes are harmful, and it might explain why so many faculty, staff, and students have started to protest and write letters. Breaking Down the Harm in These Changes Broadly speaking, I don't think there is really a good argument that could be made for any of the changes in SB1. It's entirely antithetical to the concept of higher education, and it speaks to an ongoing mission of conservatives looking to dismantle it. The Importance of DEI One of the major attacks that SB1 makes is against DEI as a concept. SB1, of course, isn't unique in this regard. Conservatives have been obsessed with DEI and any of its earlier terminology for some time now. I won't make any claims on why I think that is, but it's clearly troubling. DEI is simply an acronym (or rather an initialism) for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Often, DEI also picks up a letter here and there for things like Accessibility, as in DEIA or IDEA, and Justice, as in JEDI. In the context of education, DEI serves as a mechanism to ensure everyone has a fair shot regardless of background and identity. In this section, I want to go through each of the letters and talk about why I think they're important from the perspective of just a normal white guy. The Importance of Diversity Of all the terms, I think diversity is the easiest to digest. After all, we all more or less agree that diversity is good, or rather that homogeny is bad. We know that because any time a group of people come together talking about purity in the bloodline (i.e., Klansmen, Nazis, etc.), we know they mean violence. It's interesting because conservatives know the concept of diversity is popular, so much so that they often use the terms "intellectual diversity" or "diversity of thought." In this case, eliminating DEI is meant to promote intellectual diversity, almost as a white washing of MLK's "content of character" phrase. It's color-blindness that's meant to ignore history and enable discrimination. Of course, what do conservatives mean when they say "intellectual diversity?" They're talking about conservatism itself. They see colleges and universities as a threat to conservatism. If education is enough to dismantle a worldview, maybe the worldview isn't grounded in reality. In contrast, anyone who has spent time at a university knows that diversity is meant to be celebrated. We don't pretend race (or for that matter: gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.) doesn't exist because it absolutely does, and we are better off for recognizing it. The Importance of Equity In terms of the three components of DEI, equity is probably the most important for facilitating meaningful change. After all, equity calls into question the role institutions, such as the government, a university, or a company, play in discrimination. To do that, we just have to look at history. After all, it's pretty easy to point to the fact that slavery existed. It's pretty easy to point to the fact that the three-fifths compromise existed. It's pretty easy to point to the fact that redlining existed. It's pretty easy to point to the fact that segregation laws existed. It's pretty easy to point to the fact that the Tuskegee Experiment existed. It's pretty easy to point to the fact that the MOVE bombing existed. Simply pretending that this history doesn't exist or acting like it doesn't affect us now is ignorant. Yet, when a campus office offers scholarships to Black people as an effort toward equity, they're committing some major injustice according to conservatives. It seems impossible for them to admit that systemic issues are real and have generational consequences. It's why banning DEI is so comically stupid to me. You're trying to speedrun race relations like we've done anything meaningful to resolve these injustices. So maybe it's okay that we recruit students from Black communities. Maybe it's okay that we provide special scholarships for Black students. Maybe it's okay we build out student groups to provide community to Black students. And that's just for the Black students. Do we need to go through the history of the gay community? How about the history of displaced migrants due to our military campaigns? Often, even in the case of SB1, the argument is that DEI is anti-merit. Again, this is silly to me. Is it merit when some students have significantly more to overcome to earn the same degree? Is it merit when someone has to work a job while in school to pay for their education? Is it merit when only certain people can have access to education? The Importance of Inclusion What conservatives grossly misrepresent about DEI is that it is somehow a mechanism for exclusion—ironic given that inclusion is in the acronym. When people can't get into college or struggle to find work, conservatives present DEI as the reason, when it is anything but. When you think about it, DEI is really just a complete action plan to ensure diversity is even possible. For example, equity is leveraged to help get students in the door through scholarships and outreach to achieve diversity. When equity is done well, we end up with a diverse population of students. Unfortunately, getting students in the door isn't enough. Equity might continue to be used to address systemic issues at the university, but inclusion can also be used to foster a sense of community for students. Otherwise, we risk losing our diversity, an issue that is heavily documented in the STEM literature. Hell, I just read recently that racial diversity in friendship leads to better academic outcomes in STEM. I just cannot fathom how anyone would be against this. Therefore, I am all for efforts to make students feel like they belong in the classroom. I also think student clubs and organizations that serve marginalized groups are a great way of preserving diversity. Ending DEI will lead to the end of these kinds of support groups. The Importance of Accessibility As we continue to destroy DEI, get ready to see the impacts in unexpected places. For example, an often included component of DEI is accessibility. Generally, we think of accessibility as helping out the disabled. Yet, it's much, much more than that. In fact, we all benefit from accessibility every day. How many of you talk into your phone to transcribe a text? That's accessibility. How many of you use subtitles when you're watching a movie? That's accessibility. How many of you have read the description of an image when a page won't load? That's accessibility. How many of you have zoomed into an image or article on your phone? That's accessibility. When you dismantle DEI, you take away the very practices that benefit everyone. To illustrate this, I'll share quick story. At one point this semester, one of my take home exams was scheduled for a weekend. I knew this would cause problems, so I told students they could request an extension, no questions asked. Several students told me that Eid was over the weekend and that an extra day would help them a lot. When I realized how many students this was affecting, I extended the exam for everyone by a day—even if they weren't personally celebrating Eid. As a result, I was able to educate folks on a Muslim holiday while also granting everyone an extra day to study. While I'm not sure I would exactly consider this an example of accessibility, it does highlight how DEI broadly benefits everyone. When we consider the needs of everyone, we elevate the experience for everyone. Therefore, I ask you: with the end of DEI, what do we do for our students (and lack thereof) now? The Importance of Collective Bargaining While DEI is the central focus of the bill, lawmakers found a way to sneak in a few more ways to kneecap educators. For example, one of the biggest bans in the bill is on faculty striking. Now, I don't know how to say this any clearer, but labor rights are human rights. You can't simultaneously say that eliminating DEI is "promoting free speech" while also removing that exact same right from faculty. Much like when universities were sending in police squads to handle peaceful protests on campus, the state government seems to think that shutting down free speech is good actually. Perhaps the most infuriating part of the whole thing is that they're pitching it as a social good to students, much like when they act like they're "saving the children" when they ban the existence of trans people. In fact, the argument against the protests was almost the exact same argument made about striking: what about the poor little students just trying to study? It's this framing that is completely disingenuous. As much as corporate America wants you to think otherwise, withholding labor is your right as an American. That right has granted us the 40-hour work week. That right has granted us paid vacation. That right has granted us the minimum wage. By stripping faculty of their right to strike, you're handing all the power to the institution, the same one that treats every major university like a business. It's already bad enough with class sizes exploding, understaffing in advising offices, and little respect for the teaching aspect of the job. Now, without the right to strike, I don't know why anyone would come here to teach voluntarily—unless of course the complete erosion of labor rights makes people desperate enough to do it. The Importance of Freedom of Expression The last topic I want to talk about is related to the requirement of the American Civics course. It's clear from this inclusion in the curriculum that our lawmakers aren't even remotely interested in the education process. They see universities as simply indoctrination factories, and they want to get their grimy hands in on the action. When I heard that the bill would require an American Civics course, I immediately knew this was a stupid partisan attempt to spread propaganda. This course is not going to be used to teach the actually history of the United States, right? Otherwise, that would make folks understand the reason for DEI. No, it's only going to cover the "good" parts of our history. It's blatant whitewashing happening in the open. Ironically, while SB1 is putting propaganda directly back into the education system, it's also removing our ability to dissent. It's like lawmakers put in all these safeguards to prevent actual freedom of expression. Right now, me being critical of the bill is not technically illegal under SB1, but if I were to talk about this in the classroom, it would be. How is that promoting intellectual diversity? Not only that, but I find the idea of intellectual diversity to be silly. In epistemology, we talk about what it means to know what we know. There are a lot of ways to categorize epistemological beliefs, but my favorite framework comes from Deanna Kuhn. In her work, she talks about dualism and multiplicity, where dualism assumes truth is a binary but relies on an authority figure whereas multiplicity assumes multiple truths but doesn't differentiate any of them. In America, we tend to fall in the latter category as folks say things like, "everyone is entitled to their opinion." Of course, this notion that everyone is entitled to their opinion is entirely wrong. There are genuinely bad opinions, and we should not respect them. If they are not reasoned and grounded in evidence, they can be ignored. If that sounds like I'm pushing against "intellectual diversity" or "freedom of expression," I'm not. Anti-vaxxer rhetoric is incompatible with scientific evidence. Holocaust denialism is incompatible with historical records. Zionism is incompatible with evidence of a literal genocide. So yes, you can espouse whatever beliefs you like, but your peers and professors are not required to respect them. If I think your conservative beliefs are misinformed, I should retain my freedom of expression to tell you that. It's not indoctrination. It's no suppressing thought. It's how ideas are exchanged in the academy: you have to be able to defend your position. If that hurts your feelings, you don't get to just legislate your own safe space. Anticipating the Impacts of SB1 on Higher Education Given what I've said about the importance of DEI, collective bargaining, and speech, here's what I expect to happen at universities in Ohio over the next few years (assuming no lawsuits to the bill). First, I expect to see a major brain drain in Ohio, both in terms of faculty and students. In terms of faculty, the reduction of rights for faculty (e.g., removing the right to strike and limiting speech in the classroom) automatically makes Ohio universities less competitive. Therefore, I expect it to be much harder to get qualified applicants to work without massive compensation packages (which we probably won't see because faculty can't strike). Along the same lines, I expect it to be harder to keep professors, especially professors with marginalized identities. Their entire existence is political, and the state legislature has said it's time to eliminate their existence. Likewise, if any professors are working on DEI-related or even adjacent projects, they'll have to relocate too. That doesn't just include the humanities and social sciences. That includes STEM and medicine too. In terms of students, having an extra civics class probably won't move the needle for folks. However, losing access to funding is going to make universities significantly less diverse. As a result, you will necessarily have to admit less qualified students—ironic given the general disdain for DEI. I think this issue gets even worse when you consider international students, especially graduate students. Grad programs are going to see a massive drop in talent, which will delay innovation for some time. Second, I expect that students will get a worse quality of education. After all, if controversial topics are off limits, how do you write assessments? Are facts controversial? Do we have to accept the wrong answers because everyone is entitled to their opinion? Is correcting a student suppressing speech? I would assume so because students have now been given the power to report faculty for violating SB1. It's like we've set up education to be a safe space for the lowest common denominator. Third, while no one in higher education wanted this bill, I expect to see even more disdain for public education going forward. Clearly, laws like these are intended to gut public education until people no longer respect it. We already see this in K-12 with the push for school choice. As a result, when the average person sees public education in a negative way, it's much easier to sell them on the alternatives. And, I do mean sell. We're talking about politicians who want to funnel taxpayer money directly into private schools, so they can cash in. Ironically, I think the attacks on DEI sort of give the game away; public schools are full of riffraff. Fourth, I expect the government to continue these attacks on higher education. Every piece of legislation like this is meant to chip away at education. I don't even have to prove that: this isn't their first attempt to try to get something like SB1 passed. I fully expect things to get worse before they get better, but I also know that means it's time to organize and mobilize. Ultimately, I think signing SB1 was a huge mistake. I had hoped that the massive turnout of protestors (including myself) would have been enough to persuade some of our lawmakers—or at the very least, DeWine—but I should know better than to believe that our officials serve anyone other than the almighty dollar. With that said, I'll keep my eye on higher education as I'm embedded in it. In the meantime, keep your eyes out for an update on the situation. While you wait, feel free to check some of the related pieces (I know these don't seem that related. I'm only now dabbling in politics.): Post-Positivist Thinking Is Holding Tech Education Back Is Anyone Else Bothered by How Quickly We Adopted Generative AI? It’s Time We Talk About Student Evaluations of Teaching Likewise, you can help support the site even more by checking out my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, take care of yourself! I'll hopefully see you back here soon.