The National Association of Sholars issued a press release Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act Passes Senate, which explains how Ohio legislators are enacting regulations to remove Wokeness from a position of ultimate authority in higher education institutions.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. Later on are some comments showing that indeed woke operates as the entrenched religion at Ohio State university and others.

The Ohio Senate has passed Senate Bill 83, the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act. SB 83, sponsored by Senator Jerry Cirino, will do an extraordinary amount to depoliticize public colleges and universities, strengthen intellectual diversity on campus, and restore citizen oversight of the state’s higher education system.

“SB 83 is the leading edge of higher education reform bills,” said National Association of Scholars (NAS) President Peter Wood. “In 2021, the NAS set out to rehabilitate colleges and universities by promoting model legislation after so many institutions proved unable or unwilling to reform from within. SB 83 takes from our Model Higher Education Code and adapts it to the needs and political circumstances of Ohio.

It was an honor to work with the state’s legislature and our members
to see that this bill passed the Senate.”

SB 83’s sponsors went above and beyond for their state’s citizens to offer a comprehensive improvement to Ohio higher education. Their catalogue of reforms includes requirements that colleges and universities commit themselves to intellectual diversity, and to prohibiting both “diversity statements” and mandatory trainings or courses in discriminatory concepts such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). The bill also adds requirements for reformed mission statements, syllabus transparency requirements, detailed budgetary transparency, nondiscrimination, transparency about speaker fees, and a new American history and government general education requirement. Importantly, the bill reinforces prohibitions on segregation and bars financial entanglements with the People’s Republic of China.

Wood added, “SB 83 absolutely is necessary. Intellectual diversity has dwindled on campuses nationwide and is effectively non-existent on most college campuses. This problem certainly extends to Ohio’s universities.”

NAS Senior Fellow John Sailer has written extensively about how so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucrats at Ohio State University have used diversity statements and other administrative means to screen candidates for hire and promotion by political association. SB 83 puts an end to such practices that endanger academic freedom.

“When Ohio’s universities became incapable of reforming themselves to uphold the principles of what makes higher education higher, its citizens and legislature stepped up,” explained Wood. “These reform-minded Ohioans have our sincerest gratitude.”

[Comment:  According to research, Ohio State has 94 DEI personnel, 1.5 times the OSU History Faculty.  That’s second only to University of Michigan with 163.  The average university has 45 DIE personnel.  Source: DEI Bloat in the Academy]

SB 83 is well tailored to accomplish its goal. It is comprehensive,
detailed, but with carefully drafted language.

SB 83, for example, does not prohibit “diversity, equity, and inclusion courses or training for students, staff, or faculty”; rather, it specifies that the universities may not require them. SB 83 uses such precise language throughout, to ensure that it champions liberty in Ohio’s universities, and does not accidentally infringe upon the principles or the practice of academic freedom.

The National Association of Scholars heartily endorses SB 83, urges the Ohio House to pass companion legislation to this bill, and for Governor DeWine to sign it.

NAS is a network of scholars and citizens united by a commitment to academic freedom, disinterested scholarship, and excellence in American higher education. Membership in NAS is open to all who share a commitment to these broad principles. NAS publishes a journal and has state and regional affiliates. Visit NAS at www.nas.org.

Footnote:

DEI advocates are unhappy at losing a closed shop regarding subjects like climate policies.  From Time More States Want Students to Learn About Climate Science. Ohio Disagrees

That’s because just last week, the state senate began debating the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act, which would tie the hands of instructors at colleges and universities from teaching effectively on subjects the state legislature has labeled as “controversial,” including climate change. Those institutions would have to guarantee that they’re “encourag[ing] students to reach their own conclusions,” on such matters, which also include subjects like abortion rights. The schools are also obligated to not “seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view” on students. Higher education institutions would also be barred from implementing sustainability initiatives. Diversity or equity programs would also be banned.

Many schools mention climate change in science class, but absent efforts like those in New Jersey the curriculum can fall woefully behind the current science and state of urgency. On a recent visit to several D.C.-area charter schools, for instance, a colleague of mine was surprised by how little climate awareness was part of the curriculum. She asked one class of 11th graders if any of them were worried about how climate change would impact their own lives; only one hand went up, and that student was more focused on what would happen if the polar ice caps melted 100 years from now. A few students in a 9th grade class had heard of Greta Thunberg, but weren’t exactly sure what she stood for. When prompted, a few other 11th graders in another school acknowledged that heat waves had gotten worse in the D.C. area over the past few years, likely because of climate change, but the solution, they said, was more air conditioning. Other classes were more informed, but it appeared to be due to the efforts of individual teachers, not the curriculum.

Ohio’s law proposes to go entirely in the opposite direction, preventing educators from teaching the established facts of climate change as such, and forcing them to add misleading arguments from climate change skeptics. Supporters say the measure is about championing intellectual diversity on an important subject. “What I think is controversial is different views that exist out there about the extent of the climate change and the solutions to try to alter climate change,” said Republican state senator Jerry Cirino, the bill’s primary sponsor, speaking with Energy News Network.

From Inside Climate News Students and Faculty at Ohio State Respond to a Bill That Would Restrict College Discussions of Climate Policies.

“You can say gravity isn’t true, but if you step off the cliff, you’re going down,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist who teaches at Texas Tech University and a well-known writer and commentator about climate change and responding to climate denial. “And if you teach other people that gravity is not true, you are morally responsible for anything that happens to them if they make decisions based on the information you provided.”

The measure has passed the Ohio Senate and is now being considered by the Ohio House, both of which have large Republican majorities. Gov. Mike DeWine is also a Republican.

“Academics want to protect their woke fiefdom so they can continue to churn out like-minded and intolerant opponents of intellectual diversity,” said Sen. Jerry Cirino, a Cleveland-area Republican and lead sponsor of the bill, in a guest column last month in The Columbus Dispatch.