Intellectual Diversity Centers Story

I’m excited to share an important front page story that appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on Sept 22, 2024 about the newly created “intellectual diversity” centers in Ohio. While there are a lot of important issues around this topic, and I had hoped the story would dig more into the underlying politics at stake and their connections to the far-right culture war on schools, it’s still an important story raising more public visibility on these issues. As I think the story rightly asks, what exactly is the so-called “academic freedom” conservatives claim is under threat?

Here’s a brief excerpt from the start of the story:

 Academic freedom or government overreach? GOP created five college ‘intellectual diversity’ centers – what’ll they do?

Last June, as the Ohio Senate met to approve its version of the state’s biennial budget, a few dozen college students marched through the Ohio Statehouse in vocal opposition of the hotly debated higher education bill, Senate Bill 83.

Students from Ohio public universities held a mock funeral for the state’s higher education system in the Statehouse rotunda. Donning graduation robes and battery-operated candles, they carried signs with phrases like “Silence = death to higher education” and “RIP HIGHER ED. KILLED BY SB 83.”

Meanwhile, in the Senate chambers, Republican lawmakers discussed efforts to pass SB 83. Opponents warned the controversial bill would dramatically change Ohio’s higher education landscape, from ending mandated diversity training to creating new student evaluations to rate professors on how well they’ve removed bias from their classrooms.

SB 83 did not make it into the state budget. It currently sits in an Ohio House committee. Instead, some student protesters watched on as lawmakers passed another, less conspicuous higher education bill into the budget: Senate Bill 117.

The bill allocated $24 million to enact “intellectual diversity” centers at five Ohio public universities: Ohio State University, the University of Toledo, Miami University, Cleveland State University and the University of Cincinnati.

You can read the full story here.