On March 28, 2025, the Ohio governor signed into law a bill that weakens faculty protections, including tenure and faculty bargaining rights, and bans diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming at the state’s public higher education institutions.
Ohio Senate Bill 1 makes sweeping changes affecting Ohio’s public colleges and universities. The law requires the state’s public higher education institutions to establish a post-tenure review process that would effectively eliminate tenure. It bans higher education unions from engaging in collective bargaining. Using vague and overbroad terms, it prohibits colleges and universities from establishing DEI offices and from addressing DEI in job descriptions or scholarships. It requires “intellectual diversity, “multiple, divergent, and varied perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues,” without regard for quality or academic merit. It mandates that four-year institutions publicly post undergraduate course syllabi online, including the names of instructors and a list of readings, presumably to aid transparency but which could also increase harassment. It requires higher education institutions to affirm that they will not make statements related to subjects of “political controversy, including issues such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.”
The law fits into a pattern of legislatures undermining university autonomy. At least 129 anti-DEI bills have been introduced across 29 states since 2023, with at least 19 becoming law. The Ohio law, as most of the others, use broad language and undefined terms that conflate discriminatory activity, which is already prohibited under Titles VI and IX among other provisions, and nondiscriminatory research, teaching, or discussion of important and contested political, social, cultural, and economic issues concerning race, gender and sexuality, among other topics. State prohibitions on discriminatory conduct are permissible, while state restrictions on what topics or ideas may or may not be discussed on university campuses undermine autonomy, academic freedom, and free expression.
Scholars at Risk is concerned about government encroachments on universities’ authority to set policies concerning personnel, admissions, curricula, and the establishment of particular programs. Such actions undermine university autonomy and inhibit institutions’ ability to function freely, undermining academic freedom and democratic society generally. Actions targeting discourse or programming aimed at encouraging broad and successful participation in higher education by persons from a wide array of personal, economic, and social backgrounds diversity and social justice efforts may also erode core university values, including social responsibility and equitable access.
Sources:
https://apnews.com/article/higher-education-ohio-dei-restrictions-faculty-strikes-8b0ab7db08eb712e3350bb241b610f70
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2025/04/01/ohio-and-kentucky-ban-dei-reduce-tenure-protections
https://signalcleveland.org/ohio-public-colleges-senate-bill-1-changes-sb1/
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/politics/not-just-dei-seven-things-you-to-know-about-ohios-sweeping-higher-ed-bill/
https://www.axios.com/local/columbus/2025/03/28/senate-bill-1-ohio-college-reform-dei-strike
https://legiscan.com/OH/text/SB1/2025