(bright music) - Hello, and welcome to "Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

In less than 140 days, Ohioans will go to the polls to vote for a president, US Senator, their representative in Congress, and their state legislators.

But between now and then, there is a lot going on in the state of Ohio, down in Columbus, that has a lot of impact on every citizen in the state.

Joining us talk about those issues are Dr. David Jackson from BGSU, and from Columbus, the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler.

And, Karen, one of the big laws, one of the proposed laws that's been working its way through a bill, called House Bill, or Senate Bill 83, has been rolling kind of around and through the legislature.

So, kind of talk about that.

And then both you and David, I know, have insight into that.

But tell us about Senate Bill 83, kind of lay out the groundwork, how it's evolved, maybe where it is in the process, and where we're headed with that right now.

- Well, supporters of Senate Bill 83 have called it a free speech bill.

And really, what it does is it tries to address concerns that conservatives have had about college campuses and some of the things being taught and some of the things happening on college campuses.

And the bill started out as a bill that would ban all diversity, equity, and inclusion training, would ban all faculty strikes and do a host of other things.

Some of those have been altered.

Now, most DEI training is banned.

The faculty strikes provision.

The ban on that has been removed, but there's still a lot of things in here that have some real concern for all the people who have shown up to testify against this bill and have spoken out against it.

One of the things that's interesting in here is, it requires intellectual diversity on topics that are actually spelled out in the legislation, which include climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.

And those are, to some people, settled issues, to other people, issues to be discussed with a variety of perspectives.

There's some other things in here about relationships with China, about colleges and universities not being able to take public positions on specific issues, but that's where Senate Bill 83 is right now.

It's in the House, it's passed the Senate in the House, and we're waiting to see if it moves forward.

- Hmm.

And David, from your perspective, tell us your opinion or your focus on Senate Bill 83 and then how you view it.

- Sure.

And just sort of a full disclosure thing here, I am both a objective political science professor and analyst, but I'm also the president of the BGSU Faculty Association, which is the faculty union at BGSU.

But I'm here speaking as a political science professor who can look at a piece of legislation and think about its contents.

The bill does contain everything that Karen said it contains, and it contains a few extra things as well, because I think those are some of the things that may have held it up, which is that it contains provisions with regard to organized labor.

So organized faculty labor.

So once the legislation's provision prohibiting strikes was removed, not every piece of the legislation that affects organized labor has been removed.

So it prohibits a bunch of subjects related to the evaluation of faculty from the collective bargaining process.

And this is very troubling to Ohio faculty unions because as they have expressed it publicly, the concern is that we have a system of higher education in Ohio that is very sort of non-centralized, that cultures have developed at each campus, not just in terms of collective bargaining and faculty administration relations, but in terms of managing issues related to diversity, equity and inclusions, managing issues related to what's taught in the classroom and wasn't taught in the classroom, managing issues about protests on campus.

And so, you know, we have not one university culture in the state of Ohio, but multiple university cultures that have developed over time in ways that work for them.

Other states have a much more centralized system.

But one of the central concerns that's come from the faculty labor side about SB 83 is that it's kind of a one-size-fits-all bill that would make places that are, you know, very different from each other behave in ways that are exactly the same.

And so the politics on this is interesting because, again, taking as much as possible an objective view of it, it seems plausible that much of what's in the bill could have passed had the labor stuff not been in it.

That there's probably, you know, a sufficient number of people in the legislature who have concerns, be they well or Ill-founded about diversity, equity, and inclusion and how much money is put into it and how much of a requirement there is, you know, for potential applicants and faculty, you know, to engage in those issues.

And, you know, it's my sense as a political scientist that the bill might have been able to get through had it been less comprehensive, had it included, you know, fewer subjects, had it not engaged with the concept of collective bargaining and limitations on collective bargaining.

So at this point, it seems that the bill suffers from the possibility of overreach, and it's unclear what the bill's future is.

The supporters of the bill are gathering signatures to demonstrate to the speaker that there is a majority of support for the bill.

If that is successful, it's my understanding that doesn't actually require that the bill move forward, but then that could be the next step to do a discharge petition, which would then take it out of the hands of the speaker.

And so it's a very much, you know, in flux situation that I'm sure Karen's much more on the ground aware of.

- Yeah, that's confirmed.

Representative Bill Seitz and Representative Tom Young, two Republican representatives who are circulating a letter that would gauge support for whether there are the votes for Senate Bill 83.

And if there are, and House Speaker Jason Stephens doesn't want to bring it to the floor.

There is this discharge petition, which is when you get a majority of the House to sign onto it, they can bring it to the floor and vote on it without the speaker pushing for it.

So that is definitely happening.

I could see some of these other things being put into Senate Bill 83 to kind of sweeten the deal, but there are some elements that have been talked about as adjacent to Senate Bill 83 that are already in place.

For instance, there are five intellectual diversity centers at colleges and universities around the state.

I think the Cleveland State University, they just confirmed the people who are involved in that one.

There are several others.

And that's just, it's one of those elements that was part of Senate Bill 83 that got through in the budget.

- [Steve] Hmm, okay.

- Yeah, we certainly have a legislature that's intensely interested in higher education issues in Ohio.

And that's...

When that happens, legislation then gets passed related to those issues.

And so it's fair to point out that lots of legislation has already been passed concerning higher education, lots of legislation is pending, and probably lots more legislation will be coming.

- Okay, when we come back, we can probably finish up this discussion about Senate Bill 83 and move on from that, or at least maybe a little bit of it.

Back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University's Political Science Department, and the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler.

Back in just a moment.

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

Our guest are Karen Kasler, host of "The State of Ohio," and Dr. David Jackson from Bowling Green State University's Department of Political Science.

We were finishing up, or in a part of a discussion about Senate Bill 83, but there's one portion that we mentioned, and I'd kind of like to go back and get a little more depth.

You mentioned these intellectual centers that are funded under the proposed bill.

So, Karen, talk a little about what those are and why they're in the bill and maybe what the objective is, what the purpose is, why are they in Senate Bill 83?

- Well, they're actually not in Senate Bill 83, but there are similar in ideology to what senate bill 83 is talking about.

They were actually added to the state budget, these five intellectual diversity centers at Ohio State University, the University of Toledo, Miami University, Cleveland State, and the University of Cincinnati.

And the whole idea behind these was to make these independent academic units, but it's worth noting that the people who are leading them are appointed by state lawmakers.

And the whole idea of Senate Bill 83 is to address concerns that some Republicans have about what is being taught at colleges and universities.

So when you add that kind of political appointee angle in there, there are certainly people who question exactly what these intellectual diversity centers are going to be teaching and why they're even on campus.

$24 million is funding these five centers.

And again, that came from the state budget, but it's certainly along the same lines as Senate Bill 83, which we're still waiting to see if it goes through the House.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And David- - Yeah, these are...

These are very interesting.

And taking it again from the, you know, political scientist, you know, analytical standpoint, universities in Ohio believe that they exist in a period of relatively scarce resources, that the governor's higher ed budget, you know, as proposed, would've been different for Ohio public universities than what the state eventually passed in terms of funding.

And the state of Ohio, you know, has an interest, and in some ways, a commitment to increasing the completion rate, increasing the number of people in Ohio who have degrees.

And at each of the universities in Ohio, and I see this from personal experience, every year, there is a desire to create more new programs and faculty positions than there is money available for.

So the universities, both in terms of the faculty who are unionized, the faculty who are not unionized, and the administrations were I think sort of collectively taken aback by the relatively easy availability of money.

And again, in the state budget, you know, $24 million, you know, is a drop in the bucket compared to the state budget of Ohio.

But the number of faculty positions that are being created is not a drop in the bucket when those positions are increasingly scarce, increasingly hard to find and increasingly hard to get funded at various universities.

So that was one of the concerns, you know, about the bill.

But as we... Or about the creation of the centers.

Of course, also, as we mentioned in the previous segment, you know, the state of Ohio legislature is very interested in issues related to higher education.

So there's a couple of other bills working their way through that are in various stages.

And Karen is much more comfortable with the bill numbers than I am, but one of them relates to the College Credit Plus program, which is a program that is designed to make it easier for students to get their degrees completed by allowing them when they're in middle school and high school to take courses at universities or to take college credit courses taught by their teachers if their teachers are qualified.

This bill would make it easier for the chancellor to create policies to, or would make it so that the chancellor could create policies that would make it easier for people who are not teachers, who are not professors, to be considered qualified to teach these courses.

And so, again, speaking from, you know, an analytical perspective, you know, what I hear is that, you know, faculty and administrations share the goal of making sure that students are able to complete college degrees in as quick a process as possible.

One of the concerns, and I'll say directly that I share this concern, is that what makes a college graduate, generally speaking, you know, more successful economically than non-college graduates, and there's statistics that measure this.

It doesn't apply to each individual.

But a college graduate will have greater lifetime earnings, for example, typically than a non-college graduate.

It's not the credential that does that, it's not the achievement of the institution's board of trustees granting a degree.

It's the experience the student has on campus with communication and critical thinking, developing knowledge in their discipline, problem solving skills.

And so what the concern from universities, and there's really not a lot of difference between administrators, faculty who are unionized, the faculty who are not unionized, on this concern, is that it's, not the credential itself that makes the student a better employee and a better citizen when they graduate, it's the experience.

And so the goal is to protect that experience as much as possible.

I don't know if Karen has any thoughts on that bill, but there's other ones we could talk about as well.

- Yeah, I think some of these bills are, like I said, maybe going to be combined in some way.

Though I think there was a lawsuit that was filed over House Bill 68, which was the one that would ban transgender athletes from girl's sports and ban gender transition treatments for minors.

And the judge in putting a halt on that law said it did not pass the single subject rule test, essentially.

So I wonder if there's going to be a little bit more caution about combining some of these bills together.

But we are running out of legislative time because after the session on June 26th, they're not scheduled to be back here until after the November election.

Then, of course, we have the lame-duck session, which I've been hearing for two years is going to be crazy.

So that's when a lot of these bills could be combined, could be redone, could move forward.

- Well, and it's interesting too when you talk about those centers, not to go back to that.

That on one hand, there is an effort to say there isn't enough diversity from the legislature saying, we need more viewpoints.

We need more viewpoints, more discussion on every topic comes up in a college classroom.

On the other hand, now they are saying, but we also want to reign in your efforts toward diversity and inclusion.

So those two things seem to run into each other a little bit.

Is there an inconsistency there or is that just... Am I feeling that or is there...

But it feels that way.

On one hand, they want to broaden everybody's viewpoint, but at the same time, they want to also not allow diversity in some ways too.

So I'm confused by the directions we're getting here from the legislature, but that's probably not unusual, I guess.

So, yeah.

When we come back, we've got just a few seconds here in this segment.

We'll just pick it up on the other side.

There's obvious a couple of other things that, 'cause as David has said, this general assembly, as past general assembly, but this one in particular seems really focused on education at all levels in any number of ways.

So when we come back, we can maybe talk about a couple of the other things that are rolling through there and see where we end up with that.

So, back in just a moment here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Karen Kasler, the host of "The State of Ohio," which you can see every Sunday at 12 o'clock noon here on WBGU-PBS.

Shameless promotion for that.

And also David Jackson, professor of Political Science at Bowling Green State University.

We've talked a lot about education bills that are rolling through the legislature.

One that's kind of in its early stages, but also one that is going to get a lot of notoriety, and apparently bipartisan support, whatever that word means these days, is House Bill 606.

So tell us a little about House Bill 606, Karen.

- Well, it's called the Campus Act.

It'll put $4 million in state money toward some newly established grant programs, including one to boost security for student organizations that are at risk for racial, religious, or ethnic harassment or intimidation.

And, you know, a lot of this has been sparked by all the protests that we saw over the Israel-Hamas war.

And so this is a bipartisan bill, though, that has some support from Justin Pizzulli, who was an appointee of House Speaker Jason Stephens, and also Dontavius Jarrells, who is the House assistant minority leader.

So these are two figures who could potentially get this thing through.

Again, I wonder if there's a way to fold it into Senate Bill 83, as we were just talking about earlier, if that's the plan or if the plan is to pass it on its own.

It's fairly new in its passage through, so it's likely one of these things that will be taken up toward the end of the year when we have lame-duck session.

- Yeah, okay.

And David, from your perspective in House Bill 606, obviously, early stages.

Any concerns about that from a higher education view, what it would change, or how it would change the way campuses handle that sort of thing?

- What we hear from faculty representative organizations is that any development of policies related to these issues should include faculty involvement, student involvement, and not exclusively administration involvement.

And so, obviously, you know, faculty and their representative organizations are completely, you know, opposed to anti-Semitism, violence against students, discrimination, you know, all of the forms of completely inappropriate and improper behavior.

And the concern is that when policies are developed on campus, because as we mentioned in the earlier segments, Ohio having a very diversified group of institutions who have traditionally had a great deal of autonomy in terms of developing policies and processes that match, you know, the needs of their institutions, that that autonomy continue to be respected and that the faculty voice and the student voice, along with the administration voice and the state voice, be heard in the development of policies.

- Yeah, okay.

All right.

Now, I know we've talked a lot about Columbus.

We obviously, I mentioned at the beginning of the show that obviously, we're gradually, we're quickly moving toward an election in November for president, senate, and general assembly and all the folks that occupy the House of Representatives.

Any perspective on that right now, where we stand?

Obviously, we're ahead of the conventions yet, although, are the conventions, David, going to mean anything to anybody other than the people that are there in person early?

- Well, we don't have conventions like we used to have conventions.

Before, most of us were around (indistinct) smoke filled rooms where decisions were actually made about who the nominee was going to be.

What conventions have become are essentially infomercials for the political party and the political party's nominees, not even necessarily always the political party's positions, but sort of the brand of the political party and the overall vision of the political party, which is why, you know, you see decreased comprehensive media coverage of the conventions.

Certainly, cable news covers 'em more extensively and more likely live than other outlets do because there's not a great deal of news that's actually made at the conventions.

On the other hand, they do still attract large numbers of viewers, especially for keynote addresses and for the speech of the candidate accepting their party's nomination.

So it is an opportunity for the party to present a relatively unfiltered view of itself to larger sections of the public than they're traditionally able to get to through that meet.

So they're inconsequential in terms of, you know, creating tension about who the nominee is going to be.

But they can be very important in terms of giving those nominees and giving that party a chance to get its message out to large numbers of people.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

- And I would add that that's important because there continue to be these rumors that somehow President Biden will not be the Democratic nominee.

And that just seems incredibly unlikely.

I don't want to say it won't happen because God only knows anymore what's going to happen, but it's so unlikely as to be really almost into the conspiracy theory area.

But that's, I think, there are people saying, "Watch the June 27th debate between Biden and Trump and look for signals there."

I think this is going to be one of the things that could potentially drive people to watch the conventions.

- Yeah, well, it's a good point.

I mean, David and you would know this better than I would.

Has there ever been a situation where there has been an incredible surprise in our lifetime, in the last a hundred and some years, at a convention where what happened was a total surprise in terms of selection of a nominee?

I mean, that just doesn't happen anymore, does it?

- Yeah, the likelihood of either major party right now dumping their nominee is close to zero, unless, you know there is a health issue.

- Yeah.

- Unless there is, you know, an illness.

So I agree with Karen that the probability of that is low.

It could generate, you know, some interest in terms of getting more people to watch, but the amount of signals that would be coming before the convention itself actually happens would mean that it's not going to be like Biden or Trump are walking to the podium to give their acceptance speech and someone taps 'em on the shoulder and says, "Nope, it's not going to be you."

So much would've happened before that point that won't be televised.

- Yeah.

Well, and a good question, and you mentioned this, that the odds on it changing are, but one of the questions is on the Republican side is, who's going to be the vice presidential choice?

And J.D.

Vance, the US Senator from Ohio, is in the room a lot.

And people are saying, "Oh, the people in the room, the ones who might be the selection."

Well, he seems to be there a lot.

And the question would be, "Trump does not need Vance to win Ohio, does he?"

I mean, I can't see- - No.

He's going to win Ohio no matter what.

I mean, in whole discussion about whether Biden's going to be on the ballot, remember we had to change the law, the deadline.

There was never a question that Trump was going to win Ohio.

That's going to happen.

So if he's looking at Vance, which I think he is, then it's because of other things that Vance brings and Vance's willingness to talk to the public, Vance's embracing of some of Trump's major policies.

That would be the reasons that he would go with Vance.

- It might have reached beyond Ohio versus it simply being, "Get the guy from this state, that'll bring Ohio voters," which was kind of the way things used to be.

- Well, in a way that you could spin Vance too, and I don't know if the Trump campaign would do this because Trump is so sort of personal about things, is, you know, J.D.

Vance changed his position on Trump radically- - Just a little.

- Over his life.

- Just a little, yeah.

- His political life.

And, you know, if the campaign were interested, they could produce a sort of conversion narrative, if you will, that might be persuasive for other people who were doubters.

But I don't know that that's, you know, the kind of thinking that happens in a campaign.

I mean, one of the things we always used to talk about with when it came to selecting a vice president was the number one thing that a campaign would look at, and I actually believe this, is we talk about all this stuff, "Well, do they bring a state, do they bring a constituency?"

- [Steve] Right.

- And that's all fair, but, you know, responsible campaigns of the past have always indicated, the number one question they ask is, "Could this person take over as president on day one?"

That was always the threshold question.

And I truly believe that that was what, you know, the responsible campaigns of our path looked like.

I'm not entirely convinced that that is the number one calculus for President Trump.

It probably is for the remnants of the responsible aspects of the Republican party.

And hopefully it is for, you know, Donald Trump because, you know, you can love or hate Mike Pence.

He was qualified to be vice president, and then president, and then could step in.

There have been campaigns who have made the mistake in the past of picking somebody who very quickly demonstrated in the public's mind, not necessarily objectively, 'cause I'm not going to say there is such a thing as objectivity on this, that they weren't qualified to step in on day one.

Sarah Palin, for example, did not, you know, acquit herself particularly well in early interviews, and so didn't clear that threshold.

So... - Okay, well, we'll- - Pence clears that threshold.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, we can pick that up because obviously we're going to talk more about this between now and November.

Conventions are coming up.

We touched on those, but we'll have everybody back to, as we closer to that, and maybe a decision were made by the next time we meet about who will be the Republican vice presidential candidate.

We'll be able to kind of dissect that and see what the purpose is behind it.

So, we'll pick that up the next time.

Appreciate you both being here today.

You can check us out at WBGU-PBS.

You can also watch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock here on WBGU-PBS.

And also too, you can check us out at WBGU.org.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

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