Ohio Senate Bill 1 (SB 1), which will do an extraordinary amount to depoliticize Ohio’s public higher education system, strengthen intellectual diversity, and restore its accountability to Ohio policymakers and citizens, well and truly will become law. Governor Mike DeWine signed SB 1 into law at the end of March. Since then, Ohio professors organized a petition campaign to challenge SB 1 from going into effect—but failed to get enough signatures within the 90-day period granted by Ohio law. Ohio SB 1 has overcome the last hurdle.
Ohio SB 1, which was informed by model legislation from the Civics Alliance’s Model Higher Education Code, drafted by the National Association of Scholars, also contains provisions that introduce post-tenure reviews for faculty to determine their continuing employment, as well as restricting their collective bargaining rights. Unionized faculty in the Ohio State University system spearheaded the petition drive. The petition underscores why Ohio lawmakers considered it reasonable to restrict public university faculty members’ collective bargaining rights. State lawmakers may rightly object to public employee union members exerting the resources they gained from the state to prevent the state’s representatives from ever rescinding those benefits. These professors’ petition does lend strength to the broader argument that public sector employees should have limited or no rights to form unions.
Of course the professors also presumably objected to SB 1’s restrictions on inculcating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in universities. We can understand why professors would want to keep getting money from the government—that’s all too human. But we are less sympathetic to the urge to force discriminatory ideologies onto students and pretend that it is education. The unionized professors who spearheaded this petition ought to be ashamed of themselves.
They are not, which is why SB 1 is both necessary and proper. Far too many professors have lost their moral compasses. They should know not to enforce bigotry—but since they do not, then they must be restrained from acting on their worst impulses. The ivory tower is the Jim Crow of our day. Ohio’s policymakers act in the best traditions of Ohio and of America when they shatter the chains of state-sponsored discrimination.
The unionized petitioners promise more opposition to SB 1. Some opposition will be overt; some will take the form of sabotage and noncompliance. We urge Ohio’s policymakers to continue to resist these counterattacks. We also urge them continue to conduct oversight on Ohio’s public universities, to ensure that SB 1 goes into effect with full compliance by every member of the faculty, the staff, and the student body.
Ohio’s professors and their unions now have exhausted all legal means to delay SB 1 from going into effect. Ohio’s policymakers should not indulge them if they attempt to use illegal means to preserve the old regime of state-sponsored discrimination.
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