The National Association of Scholars and the Civics Alliance welcome the introduction of Senate Bill 1, the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act, by Ohio State Senator Jerry Cirino. Representative Tom Young has introduced a companion bill to advance simultaneously in the Ohio House, House Bill 6. Senator Cirino, Representative Young, and their colleagues have acted as exemplary legislators by their dedication to higher education reform. They have demonstrated idealism, practicality, and grit. SB 1 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. We think these provisions will make especially good improvements to Ohio public higher education:
- Requirements that colleges and universities receiving state funds commit themselves to free speech and intellectual diversity, and to prohibiting both “diversity statements” and the inculcation of discriminatory concepts such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
- Syllabus transparency requirements for state institutions of higher education.
- Establishment at state institutions of higher education of an undergraduate General Education Requirement in American government or American history, for a course that will include documents of American liberty including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
- Detailed budgetary transparency for each state institution of higher education.
- Requirements of nondiscrimination by race, sex, or other group identity at state institutions of higher education.
We enthusiastically endorse SB 1 and hope that it will swiftly become law.
A previous version of this bill, Ohio SB 83, was introduced in Ohio’s 2024-2025 legislative session and passed by the Ohio Senate. We endorsed Ohio SB 83, and testified before the Ohio Senate and Ohio House in its favor—and, to repeat what we said then, we endorse SB 1 not least because it takes some of its language and its concerns from different bills in the Civics Alliance’s Model Higher Education Code, drafted by the National Association of Scholars. We intended for these bills to inspire state legislators to craft their own legislation, adapted to meet their political circumstances. It is an honor that Senator Cirino has considered our model language useful for Ohio. His adaptations to our model language have turned our suggestions into practicable legislation, which we will be delighted to publicize throughout the nation. Senator Cirino also has added further reforms, which were not in the Model Higher Education Code—but soon may be, because they too should be models for legislators in other states.
Sen. Cirino has had to re-introduce SB 83 as SB 1 because, despite having passed the Senate and receiving considerable public support from Ohio House members, it did not prove possible to bring SB 83 to the floor of the Ohio House in the 2024-2025 session. Sen. Cirino’s support for principled and effective higher education reform has proven doughty and enduring—and we believe that it will continue, session after session, until the higher education reform embodied in SB 1 has become law in Ohio. We are grateful that Sen. Cirino has battled so consistently and so well to improve Ohio’s higher education system.
Ohio’s public and policymakers already know that we support SB 1, and they can look at our previous endorsements to see our reasons. We would add that Ohioans can now look at the success of Ohio SB 117 as another reason to look favorably on SB 1. Ohio SB 117, which established independent academic centers at five of Ohio's public universities, received knee-jerk opposition from the academic establishment. Yet the bill passed, and now Ohio’s centers are up and running, joining their colleagues doing similar work around the country. Ohio’s universities are settling down to help these new establishments do the best possible work.
The opposition to Ohio SB 1 also is a fuss that will die down when the bill is passed into law. Ohio’s public colleges and universities can and will implement SB 1’s provisions strengthening liberty, nondiscrimination, and depoliticization. The effects of SB 1 are not trivial—thank heavens!—but it is a predictable and practical reform.
SB 1 is good reform, it is tailored reform, it is necessary reform—and, as the experience of passing SB 117 now shows, it is practicable reform. We urge Ohio’s public and policymakers once more to support Sen. Cirino’s excellent bill. Sen. Cirino’s dedicated, thoughtful, and broadly popular work should be rewarded by passage into law.
Photo by Zack Frank on Adobe Stock
