The small hearing room in the Ohio Statehouse is packed. The overflow room next door is also full—both are roped off. State Highway Patrol officers wearing tall hats direct people who have come to oppose the bill on the Workforce and Higher Education Committee’s agenda to a second overflow site set up in the Capitol crypt.
So far, 80 people have signed up to fill the three hours allotted for opposition testimony at a hearing scheduled during spring break for many public universities. More than 700 people provided written testimony.
They’re out in force against the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act, which critics say is an attack on student diversity and intellectual freedom that will destabilize higher education across the state and spark a brain drain that could permanently and negatively alter the state’s economy.
If passed, the 76-page Frankenstein bill, also known as Senate Bill 1, would prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion from scholarships, job descriptions, orientations, and trainings at Ohio’s public colleges and universities. It would shut down DEI offices or departments and require institutions to respond to complaints about noncompliance with the DEI ban.
S.B. 1 would also prohibit institutions from endorsing or opposing any belief or policy deemed politically “controversial,” such as “climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, and abortion.” Schools that fail to comply risk losing state funding.
Apparently to ensure that no DEI is sneaked into the curriculum, the bill would also require faculty to post their syllabi online, which opponents argue would make them searchable for anyone online looking for DEI in coursework—or, more broadly, would allow would-be trolls to target specific professors.
While some of Trump’s anti-DEI federal orders have been blocked by injunctions, S.B. 1 would establish a higher-education DEI ban at Ohio’s 14 public universities and 23 public colleges, affecting over 440,000 enrolled students.
By establishing processes for reporting complaints about DEI, S.B. 1 would also impose a heinous surveillance system that would stifle classroom debate and expression. The bill would then, as a stick to any “problem” faculty, effectively end job protections through faculty tenure and limit faculty collective bargaining.
As the opposition mills through the statehouse basement—some in suits, at least one student in what appears to be pajama shorts—there is a sense that they are the last line of defense for Ohio’s public higher education system.
The bill, which has previously been defeated, resurfaces at a difficult time for higher education. Ohio’s transgender “bathroom ban,” which went into effect at the end of February, requires students in K-12 schools, as well as public and private colleges and universities, to use the restroom that corresponds to the gender assigned at birth.
President Donald Trump’s January executive order, which terminated all environmental justice offices and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, or DEIA programs, claimed that such efforts were “discriminatory” and “illegal,” and threatened to withhold federal funds from institutions that continued to promote DEI.
Several universities have already removed DEI pages from their websites. The University of Akron has canceled the nearly two-decade-old “Rethinking Race” forum. Ohio University postponed its Black Alumni Reunion, citing new federal guidance and proposed state legislation. OU students staged a walkout, and hundreds protested.
OU President Lori Stewart Gonzalez promised that the university would not make changes based on “a bill that is not finalized” (S.B. 1). Days later, OU reversed course, postponing the National Women’s History Month event, Celebrate Women, citing federal guidance and proposed state legislation.
Days before the Ohio transgender bathroom ban went into effect, the University of Cincinnati quietly changed its restroom signs to read “BIOLOGICAL MEN” and “BIOLOGICAL WOMEN.” It also changed “all-gender” bathroom signs to single-occupancy.
The outcry on campus was immediate, with signs being ripped off walls or replaced with handmade generic “Bathroom” signs. Within days, University of Cincinnati President Neville Pinto announced that the university would scale back its DEI efforts in response to Trump’s executive order.
With the threat from S.B. Fresh across the state, university administrators’ capitulation was met with vocal protest. Hundreds of students and faculty descended on a board of trustees meeting, chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, S.B.” They carried signs shaming administrators for “preemptive compliance.” One had to go.
At the end of February, Ohio State University announced the closure of two DEI-focused offices, resulting in the loss of more than two dozen staff positions. OSU president Ted Carter acknowledged that the changes would “disappoint” many. Last week, approximately 1,000 students and faculty gathered to protest the university’s rollbacks and S.B. 1 .
It was the largest protest on campus since the anti-apartheid era. Protesters replaced the lyrics to the school song, “Carmen Ohio,” with the lament, “As Carter caves to Cirino’s will.” (State Senator Jerry Cirino is the bill’s sponsor in that body.)
With OSU President Carter “complying in advance,” faculty are concerned about students, the state of education in Ohio, and the impact on the state’s economy.
Students are not interested in attending a university that does not cover “basic kinds of intellectual projects, discussing what this bill calls controversial topics,” according to Shannon Winnubst, a professor in OSU’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. “They’ll go to other states.”
According to Winnubst, their young scholars see S.B. 1 as a kind of war on youth, determined to deny young people the education they deserve.
Winnubst also highlights the millions of dollars that faculty research—on allegedly “controversial” topics such as climate change—brings into the state. Between driving away Ohio’s brightest and discouraging faculty who bring research dollars to the state, S.B. 1 effectively communicates to new minds seeking their own place in higher education that Ohio is closed for business. Overall, Winnubst sees S.B. 1. as causing “economic wreckage for the state.”
David Weinberg, an astronomy professor at Ohio State, describes how his department has become more representative of Ohio over the last 15 years; its students and researchers now reflect the United States and the world in terms of gender, race, and religion.
Diversity makes a “huge difference” in everything from experimental approaches, perspectives on how collaborations should be organized, and, more broadly, ideas about “how the universe works.”
Weinberg claims the bill will make it “more burdensome and less rewarding to be a professor in the state of Ohio,” but believes the most immediate impact of S.B. 1 would focus on students, some of whom are succeeding in the program but are now under the shadow of S.B. 1 is “looking for an exit” and is considering transferring to another university outside of Ohio.
Companies in Ohio that are looking for scientifically trained employees frequently court Weinberg’s students. While astronomy may bring funding to Ohio as a result of the department’s collaboration with NASA and ground-based telescopes, students from the department work in a variety of data science and technology fields.
“I think that taking a hammer to the quality of the universities in Ohio is going to have a big negative impact on the ability of our universities to really power the economy,” says Weinberg.
For context, Ohio State University alone contributes more than $19 billion to the state’s economy and employs nearly 117,000 people. The state’s public colleges and universities contribute more than $68 billion to Ohio.
Destabilizing the sector is especially risky now that the state is finally showing signs of reversing a generation-long battle against brain drain, in which many of its brightest young people fled for better opportunities elsewhere.
Furthermore, Ohio’s recent “brain gain” is largely the result of highly skilled immigrants being drawn to the state, with university medical and research centers among the top draws for this diverse pool of workers.
It seems likely that S.B. 1 would also limit some students’ ability to obtain certification in their field of study.
“Our profession is nationally accredited, and to become a licensed social worker, you must graduate from an accredited school. According to our accreditation standards, the curriculum must include anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout,” says Jodi Whitted, professor of social work at the University of Cincinnati.
She claims that the curriculum has recently been updated, and that anti-racism is now included in all classes in accordance with DEI standards. It’s unclear how DEI could be removed from the curriculum while still meeting licensure requirements.
Whitted says her students are very concerned about “what their education will look like if this passes.”
She is hearing from speech and language pathologists, occupational and physical therapists, and other medical professionals who value anti-racism and diversity and inclusion. “This wouldn’t just impact social work, but this would impact so many other professions that require licensure,” Whitted says.
S.B. 1 appears to be “animated by this myth of liberal indoctrination,” according to Weinberg. The bill’s language implies that liberal professors impose their personal ideologies on students, whereas conservative students require safe spaces. The bill prohibits “political and ideological litmus tests” for hiring and admissions.
One of the major complicating factors in S.B. 1. Legislators appear to be equating DEI with affirmative action, which was abolished by the Supreme Court in 2023.
On campus, DEI programs frequently include student success programs for underrepresented students, according to Sara Kilpatrick, executive director of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors.
This could include student affinity groups for first-generation students or a Latino Student Union, as well as student retention programs to ensure that students who matriculate feel at home on campus and eventually graduate. S.B. 1 prohibits DEI scholarships, so students who are qualified for admission but lack the funds for tuition may be unable to attend.
Eliminating the recognition of difference will make it more difficult for people of color, women, LGBTQ people, veterans, and students with disabilities to integrate into campus life.
The bill is so vaguely worded that it appears that anything classified as “DEI” on campus will be eliminated. “A lot of times, disability services, veteran services, those kinds of things are under those umbrellas,” Kilpatrick says.
“I think higher education should be all about being able to discuss and think critically about the most pressing issues that face our world,” says Arianna Kelawala, a fourth-year student at OSU. “I believe that S. B. 1 creates a sort of chilling effect.” She is concerned that faculty, unwilling to teach “both sides” of supposedly “controversial issues,” simply refuses to teach the topics.
An earlier version of this bill, which also attacked faculty collective bargaining and prohibited “bias” in teaching, went viral internationally before stalling when Republican State Representative Sarah Fowler Arthur stated that she wanted students to learn about the Holocaust from “both sides” (that is, from the perspective of German soldiers tasked with carrying out the “Final Solution”). It is understandable that a professor would not want to teach that.
Kelawala, an organizer with the Ohio grassroots group OPAWL—Building AAPI Feminist Leadership, notes that tucked into S.B. 1 also prohibits Ohio’s public colleges and universities from collaborating with or accepting funds from any entity associated with the Chinese government. Separating relations with China leaves “room for anti-Asian hatred to kind of seep through here.”
Kelawala is applying to law school and had hoped to attend in-state, but the impending reality of S.B. 1 “definitely does present an additional factor to consider.”
Another protest of approximately 150 medical staff, researchers, and students took place last week in a park between the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
(The former has a $4 billion economic impact; Cincinnati Children’s, a consistently top-ranked children’s hospital, has a research foundation that alone receives $304.7 million in external funding.) The group protested federal cuts to scientific funding, as well as state and federal actions to prohibit DEI.
The group was concerned about how broad cuts to “DEI” would impact research. Kylee Ham, union president of the UC nurse’s union, told me that her family relocated from Texas to Cincinnati for her husband’s medical training. Cincinnati is a center for medicine and research. S.B. 1 jeopardizes the very workers the state has been attempting to attract.
” S.B. 1 attacks the ability of faculty and postgraduates to form a collective bargaining agreement and strike. The ability to withhold work is what gives a worker power. “Our work has value, and we deserve to have that power,” said Kylee Ham, president of the UC nurses’ union.
This is one of the bill’s most underappreciated—and diabolical—features. S.B. 1 capitalizes on anti-DEI sentiment and culture-war politics to “cover the fact that it’s really a union-busting bill that will make all faculty at-will employees,” according to Kilpatrick. S.B. 1 jeopardizes core principles such as academic freedom, shared governance, and faculty job security—including tenure.
“Faculty are not going to want to come to Ohio,” according to Kilpatrick, if the state is known for “trying to censure free speech at institutions” along with “essentially punish[ing] faculty for their perceived bias, when they still haven’t shown a shred of proof.”
Faculty unions would primarily be able to bargain over salaries and benefits, not evaluations, workload, tenure, or layoffs. This means that in a negotiation, the highest-paid faculty members could simply be laid off. Whole departments may be eliminated.
Among Ohio Republicans who oppose S.B. 1 is John T. Plecnik, a law professor at Cleveland State University who also serves as a Republican county commissioner in Lake County, Ohio. He claimed the title of “the most conservative professor in Ohio,” and referred to S.B. 1. “A dumpster fire that threatens to incinerate free speech on campus.”
Faculty job insecurity affects both sides. Plecnik issued a cautionary tale: “liberal dean or administrator would be able to use two years of below-average reviews in any category as a pretext to discipline or fire a conservative professor.”
Arguing that S.B. 1 is unconstitutional and would undermine academic freedoms, Plecnik said this morning, adding that debates over free speech and the First Amendment should take place on college campuses. “This should be moot court; a mock trial.
This should be a forum on campus. “The fact that we’re having this discussion now shows that some people needed to spend another year in college,” Plecnik joked, and after a three-second delay in the telecast, an uproar of cheers and laughter erupted from the adjoining overflow room.
More than 1,000 Ohioans testified against Senate Bill 1 (compared to 15 supporters). Nonetheless, the bill passed the Ohio Senate 21-11, with two Republicans joining the nine Democrats. It is expected to pass the Ohio House.
“Governor DeWine has been a big workforce development/economic development Governor, and I just can’t imagine that he would want a bill that so obviously will hurt workforce development in Ohio,” according to Kilpatrick. However, DeWine is a term-limited Republican in a heavily gerrymandered state, resulting in a Republican supermajority in the state legislature.
“If this bill had been introduced 10 years ago … it would not have seen the light of day in its current form,” Kilpatrick says.
Kilpatrick, who also spoke out against an earlier version of S.B. According to one member of the previous general assembly, many Republican legislators dislike the bill and do not want to vote on it. Yet, “they feel like they have to or otherwise they might get primaried.”
Ohio, like many other states, is caught in a vicious cycle in which gerrymandering shifts state legislatures to the right of their populations, extreme legislators are rewarded, moderates are punished, and the state’s laws become increasingly disconnected from the needs of the people. Republicans have power but lack the ability to govern effectively.
“We’re at the point where it’s gerrymandering and big money together,” says David Pepper, an expert on gerrymandering and the author of Laboratories of Autocracy.
Those who oppose the most extreme positions risk being primaried, as happened in Texas when some Republicans opposed an extreme school voucher bill. Dollars poured in from out-of-state super PACS, driving most out of the office.
“The thing about gerrymandered worlds with no accountability is that time works in their favor. He stated that if they make a mistake, such as the Holocaust remark made during the previous bill’s consideration, they learn from it and continue on.
As the hearing concluded today, a spontaneous roar erupted from the Statehouse crypt. “Kill the bill!” Kill the bill!” Voices resounded off the vaulted ceilings of the people’s home.
Despite its unpopularity among many Ohioans, other forces are at work that have the potential to overrule popular will.
The Trump administration’s commitment to dismantling DEI, undermining scientific research, and undermining higher education itself appears unwavering. S.B. 1 may be a self-destruct button for the state of Ohio, but it appears that the powers that be are willing to press it. But protesters’ voices continue to rise.
