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Its down to the wire on a resolution to make it harder to amend the Constitution and an August special election to vote on it.

And some more perspectives on a sweeping Senate bill that seeks to change higher education to address concerns that conservatives have shared about universities.

This weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Republican lawmakers have just a few days left to pass a resolution to require 60% voter approval to amend Ohio's constitution and an August special election to vote on that.

So it can be in place before a likely vote on a reproductive rights and abortion access amendment this fall.

And this week, hundreds of people came to the statehouse to show their opposition.

I just got a share of one is an attack on our democracy.

And it is a thinly veiled attack on a woman's right to choose.

It's ridiculous that 40% of Ohioans can dictate what goes on for the rest of Ohio, and I'm not going to stand for it.

I truly feel that if they if they didn't have anything to hide or they thought the legislation was good, they would run it during a regular election cycle.

If our legislature, if our executive and our judicial are all on one side, this is the last option we have as citizens to make a change.

If we disagree with.

Them and we are making it perfectly clear what we need and what we want, and they're making it perfectly clear that they're not going to do that.

So that is going to influence my voting henceforth.

But I hope the loud voices but maybe even better than just loud voices today is Bob Taft.

John Kasich, the Libertarian Party, Betty Montgomery, Jim Petro.

You've got across the spectrum all these groups saying this is just a terrible idea.

It's a power grab.

It's not Ohio.

That protest was organized by some of the groups opposed to the House and Senate resolutions and the Senate bill to create the August special election.

Hundreds of groups are opposed, along with the Ohio Association of Elections Officials, Ohio's four living ex-governors and five former attorneys general and the libertarian Party added its opposition to the list this week.

Supporters of the 60% voter approval resolution and the August special election to vote on it include right to life organizations, gun rights groups, the Center for Christian Virtue and the Ohio Restaurant Association.

This week, the Senate version of the resolution moved a step closer to a full House vote, passing an Ohio House committee with the votes of all but one Republican, Representative, Brett Hillyer, who joined the Democratic members in voting no.

A House committee hearing the special election bill was expected to vote on it on Wednesday, the same day as the protest.

But the meeting was canceled.

There are 13 members on that committee with all five Democrats opposed and Republican John Cross joining them, saying it would be a flip flop to vote for this bill after outlawing most August elections earlier this year.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who supports the resolution and the special election bill, has said they both have to pass by May 10th.

Among those protesters were people who are also opposed to Senate Bill 83, or what it sponsors call the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act, which the sponsors also say will expand free speech on campus.

The Republican backed bill would ban universities from requiring diversity, equity and inclusion or D-I training, and would also prohibit them from requiring anyone to express a specific ideology or political view or from doing public statements on controversial issues.

It would prohibit financial partnerships with China, ban hiring based on ideological litmus tests, prohibit faculty members from striking, require tenured faculty to go through performance reviews, which could include student evaluations.

And universities would have to submit a four point statement when requesting state funding.

It says the institution is committed to intellectual diversity and free speech that it doesn't require by training.

That course outlines or syllabi are published online, and that is not all that's in the bill.

Last week on the show, I spoke with the bill's Republican sponsor, Senator Jerry Cereno.

This week, different perspectives.

In a seven hour hearing that featured opponent testimony, concerns raised included increased administrative costs to comply with the requirements.

The loss of accreditation of DTI training is not required and other issues.

Emanuel Long of Columbus is a senior at Ohio State University and an aspiring doctor.

He's majoring in medical anthropology and neuroscience with a minor in African-American studies.

And he says students like him have serious worries.

It actually takes away free thinking.

And so you're not able to have various perspectives that allow students to be able to be, whether it be culturally competent, engage in various conversations around identity and their future, and really just takes away those skills to be able to relate and talk to people in general.

A lot of people would say that's part of being woke, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so it's hard work.

It's interesting.

I can laugh like it's crazy, but the term woke I think we need to be a little bit careful.

They're essentially trying to take the term what essentially the right is trying to take the term and transforming it into something that it's not all woke means is just having an objective understanding of the collective human experience.

Being aware, being an individual that is willing to open your mind, expand maybe common traditional views, that those traditional views may be exclusionary of entire groups of people.

And so it's important to be able to say that, yes, this is my experience, this is my history, this is my background.

But what about someone else's?

There are conservatives, including Senator Serino, who have said that professors are really leading this because there are ideological litmus tests and there are far more liberal professors than conservative professors, and that professors are really leading your conversations, leading you to think a certain way.

Do professors lead you and tell you what to think?

Don't they have a tremendous influence on you?

Yeah.

So like I stated before, so just drawing back to that example, so when it comes to that entire National Perspectives class, looking at colonialism, all this information is, of course, historically backed.

It's just pushed in front of the students and then they have to discuss it.

They have to form their own opinions.

They have to argue it.

And so an example yesterday was made that, you know, if someone chooses to argue in favor of colonialism, so be it.

I'm not going to score you poorly because of that and impose my own view.

But if it's a well-written paper, then you're going to get that.

And so in my own experience as a student, there is no imposing of various professor ideologies.

And in fact, that very sentiment or statement that professors are at the forefront of this movement really just goes to a race.

The student opinion that is necessary in order for this to, you know, essentially be scrapped.

And so at the end of the day, students are self determinant of their own education.

They have a voice.

They use it on a daily basis.

We use it.

And so saying that the professors are at the forefront of this movement just goes to say that, oh, you know, students have no opinion.

Students have no thought on SB 83, and it essentially just silences their perspective altogether.

Senator Serino said he's talked to some conservative students who are afraid to speak out.

They feel that they are being that their opinions are being quashed, so to speak.

They're afraid that they're going to be ostracized by other students.

They're going to get bad grades, whatever.

He said he wants all students to feel free to share their views, even walking around campus by wearing a pro-choice t shirt or a MAGA hat.

Are students free to do that?

I mean, and how do you even really police that in a way?

Yeah, let's see.

That's very interesting because, you know, one person's form of free speech and expression is another person's form of a hate crime or hate speech.

And so you need to again take everything within cultural context.

Are you doing something that might seemingly be harmless in your culture, in your in your way of life might be harmful to someone else?

And so you need to have the understanding or the consciousness to be aware enough and say, you know, if I care about people, if I am a humanistic individual, if I'm a loving person, then I'm going to stop trying my best to step into someone else's shoes.

Look, look, try my best to look at how they view the world and filter it and respect them.

And so when it comes to things like Mark MAGA or the other examples that you were saying, a lot of that is hate speech toward individuals, that those movements and those ideologies have and still do oppress.

Senator Serena says the bill will not get rid of African-American studies, gender studies.

You have an interdisciplinary major here with and minor.

Are you worried about losing access to, say, your minor in African-American studies?

Right.

And that's a really great question.

And there are all kinds of different courses that have intersecting natures, right?

Different concepts that are that that compose critical race theory.

Right.

And so very much so that's down the pipeline of the erasure of those studies.

And they may try to mask or say that African-American studies, black studies, gender studies is going to be or is going to be protected.

But those are the various those those are the very conversations that they're trying to silence.

And so if you're trying to silence that conversation, you're changing the curriculum.

If you're changing the curriculum, you're you're scrapping the course, essentially, and you're limiting the professors autonomy over what's taught in their own classroom and also the students self-determination to form what they want their education to be.

Jonah Hilario is the statewide co-director of Opal, a group representing Asian, Asian-American and Pacific Islander women and non-binary people in Ohio.

And she's concerned about the bill's language on partnerships with China and how it will affect institutions and students.

I don't know why you would think that only students from China come to a higher state.

You have scholars who come to Ohio State and other universities.

You have professors who come here and do research, and even students are affiliated with some institutions in China.

Like, you can't really separate these individuals from institutions that exist in China.

That's just like a really incorrect idea.

I don't know.

When Senator Serino last looked at an academic journal and see the level of collaboration that happens between institutions like Ohio State and other universities here in the state and looked at the institutions that are listed there and they're from all over the world.

And anything that limits those partnerships is affected directly by the language that I saw in the bill.

So there is the students, but like there are other collaborations that are happening between universities and institutions in China that are totally legit, that are not just legit, but important.

For I was actually a scientist in my past life.

I did science research at Ohio State, so that's kind of where this experience is coming from.

I work alongside graduate students, professors from China, and I admired a lot of professors who were at Ohio State who were of Chinese descent.

But also I knew that they still had relationships with institutions in China.

So how this does affect those people?

He had said that we do have to be careful to make sure that we are watching out for our best interests, and that's what he says the bill is trying to accomplish.

What do you what are your thoughts on that?

I just think what this bill is doing is inflating the threat of having Chinese nationals come to our institutions in the United States.

I think it is in our interest as a nation to have these good relationships with people from China.

If if our idea is to spread democracy around the world, what better way is there to do that to bring them here and show them how amazing this experiment in democracy is?

Right?

And putting up any barriers to that is short sighted and just not really not really looking towards answering like we have a lot of issues that our world is facing that we we need, you know, cooperation and collaboration across the globe to answer and cutting off ties to like a country of 2 million people is just, as I said, shortsighted and foolish.

What's the effect on students who are already here, researchers who are already here when this kind of information is out there, even though it could possibly be changed?

Oh, I think, look, this is something that we bring up a lot about how these types of bills and ideas impacts our community and Asian-Americans, but Asians as well in this country, because it perpetuates a narrative about Asians.

So specifically in this bill, it's like, am I saying that this is, you know, we need to keep ourselves safe?

Like so are we viewed as unsafe because of where we came from or because Americans are not very good at distinguishing between Asians what we look like because things like this, this narrative impacts all Asians who, you know, are seen as looking Chinese.

And this is something that's happened many times over the history of this country.

And I spoke with two Ohio State University professors about their concerns surrounding Senate Bill 83.

You, in a column for the Columbus Dispatch, wrote that part.

This bill is part of the political rights, racist, anti-feminist, anti-trans, homophobic, anti-union, anti-immigrant, fake free speech agenda.

That is harsh.

But and supporters of this bill say that the bill is actually about enhancing and encouraging more speech, not restricting or banning it.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Thanks for asking that.

See, I'm going to comment.

There's there's two ways to look at it, Right.

What I was trying to do in that op ed is to say this is coming from a larger politics.

It's claiming to be simply about free speech, simply about openness of discussion.

But it's coming from a larger politics.

And when we look at all the bills in the state House today in terms of, you know, trans people, trans athletes, in terms of so many things, even H.R.

one and all of that stuff, to prevent, you know, ballot on on abortion and things like that.

When we look at all of that, we see that, you know, there's a larger politics that it's coming from.

And I wanted people to recognize that.

But of course, when we talk about bills, we need to talk about specifics.

What's in the bill?

What's it actually saying?

What's it actually doing?

So there's two parts to this.

There's the political part and understanding where it's coming from and what's driving it.

Right.

And then there's the part of what's it actually saying?

And the other side is also that sometimes they talk about what the language of the bill, but sometimes they talk about their larger political agenda.

A.C.. You know, things like that.

And so this is really trying to draw that out.

Dr. Hall, I want to ask you about one of the specifics of the bill.

It would ban mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion training.

And when you were at this seven hour hearing, testifying along with several other people, there was a suggestion made that this could actually cost colleges and universities federal funding for grant programs and research that's going on.

Well, our I'm an engineering and so our accrediting board.

But they require certain diversity training within the curriculum.

So depending on what what it really means in the bill, you know, that could put us at risk of not being able to be accredited through the main accrediting body because our students are going to go out and work in a global society.

And so they have to understand how to work with a variety of different people.

And so that's kind of baked into our curriculum.

Another thing that the bill would do, it would ban ideological litmus tests in hiring.

And Senator Cimino said he's concerned about that because he says that the balance of faculty is 9010, which I presume to mean 90% liberal, 10% conservative.

So wasn't ideological litmus test used when you were hired?

Absolutely not.

I teach in world literature.

I teach in ethnic studies, and I was hired because of my knowledge of those fields of the of the literature, of the culture, of not being able to analyze texts.

It had to do with questions of knowing the history.

You know, the question had to do with the questions of my writing and my scholarship.

In fact, I think we need to turn this around.

This bill is about an ideological litmus test.

Show me the research that says 90% of faculty are liberal and 10% are conservative.

And then show me the research that says an individual's political position as a private citizen automatically translates into how they teach.

I think that there's a there's a lack of understanding about how we actually conduct our business in the classroom.

And it's a projection of the kind of ideas that we put out.

So the ideological litmus test is actually this bill.

And one of the other things he and other conservatives have said is that they want professors to show kids and students how to think, not tell them what to think.

Dr. Hall, you're in a science based fact based field.

I mean, you have a lot of influence over students.

Are you telling them how to think?

I think we're showing them, yeah.

I mean, I think engineering is probably not what Senator would be thinking of when he's thinking of these ideas and this especially this 9010 split, because we certainly have a lot of conservative folks in engineering.

But I think you do have to show them how to solve a problem rather than, you know, the solution.

But there are some things that aren't really up for debate.

Like, you know, I'm particularly worried about the climate change being supposedly a controversial topic because they're just engineering facts that you'd have to teach that have to do with climate change.

Mm hmm.

And Senator Serino said last week that he's going to change the language on that to make it a discussion about climate policies rather than climate change.

And that's one of the changes that he said he's going to make.

I want to ask you both here.

One of the other things that's in the bill is that faculty would not be allowed to strike.

Why should faculty be allowed to strike if students are paying tuition to have you teach them?

Why should you be allowed to strike?

Right.

I mean, let's open that up.

Should nurses be allowed to strike?

Should any worker be allowed to strike?

I think if we open that up, there's two things that emerge here.

First of all, the right to strike and the right to organize is the right of every worker.

And that is something that we disagree on.

Simply, he's not for workers rights and we are.

The second thing, though, is that there's, again, so many contradictions in this bill.

The claim is that faculty or these, you know, just kind of living, living large, you know, off taxpayer money.

And then there's that kind of image created.

But by this ban on the right to strike, what he actually showed is that we're workers, too.

And with that, he's brought in the whole union movement and the union movement.

Would anyone say the people in the union movement are living large off of?

No, that's not how we talk about people in the in the union movement, in the labor movement.

So Serino actually has a problem on his hands by talking about this ban on the right to strike.

In our interview last week, Senator Serino said that his take away from that seven hour hearing where you both were there, was that professors would like to tell legislators, stay out of our sandbox, don't tell us what to do or how to do it, but keep sending us billion dollar checks every year.

And by the way, we'd like more because professors are underpaid.

And he said, As legislators, we have a seat at the table.

We're not just check writers.

We care about Ohio.

We care about higher ed.

Let me ask you about that.

Do you feel like Senator Serino doesn't understand your work, doesn't respect your work, that there's no common ground here?

Well, I actually heard a lot of the people talking about how we need a better dialog.

I heard the two student body presidents of OSU both mentioned that several of the faculty who had talked said, you know, come, come visit us.

Let's let's sit down and get to work on some of these concerns that that people have and how can we really address them as a team.

But I don't think anybody wants to be told what to do.

It's just in terms of the super fine details and be micromanaged in terms of how to do their work.

So so I don't think that's that's a surprise that people are against that.

When it comes to micromanage judging.

I want to ask you the same question, but specifically in the area of history where you as an English professor live a little bit, even micromanaging some of the texts and things that you are told that you must teach to students.

And first of all, on the other question, like I just want to say on behalf of the faculty and students, you know, who came, please don't insult them.

Please don't say we don't want you to play in our sandbox, that we're clowns.

Please don't do that.

Please don't have a hearing that encourages citizens to speak and then say, Why did you say what you said?

You know that that's insulting and it's dismissive, right?

That's the opposite of encouraging a diversity of thought.

Being able to listen to someone who has something different to say.

Right.

Which we're trained in.

So I think I wanted to say that, first of all, I think on the question of history, I mean, you know, it's fascinating.

You know, there's such a move away from history that some history professor jokingly say, thank God there'll be a history requirement so that people don't graduate without history.

So there's some irony about that.

But then this idea of proscribing which texts we should teach.

I mean, that's Big brother, you know, all over again.

We don't need that.

But the ironic thing is that he gives us a letter from a Birmingham jail by Martin Luther King Jr. And if you want to talk about woke, I mean, that's a pretty woke text.

It talks about structural racism.

It talks about fighting back against unjust laws.

Right.

And what I like to say is they want us to read.

So now they're going to mandate letter from a Birmingham jail, but they don't want us to tell the history of why he was in jail in the first place.

The bottom line is, would this bill is written, as far as you can tell, encourage more speech, bring in more speech, make conservative students feel more welcome, or will it chill free speech?

I think it will chill the discussion of certain topics, even in engineering when we have things that are supposedly controversial.

I mean, I'd just rather not as an engineer.

I'd just rather not get into into all these details.

I'd just rather stay away and focus on what I do best.

So I think it would chill my discussion, for instance, of any climate change issues.

Yeah, definitely, Definitely a chill speech.

It's already doing it.

People are already self-censoring themselves in anticipation of this bill being passed.

Now senators reassess.

Some conservative students are censoring them.

Sure, sure.

I mean, when we look at the record, the faculty who've been fired from places have often been left wing faculty, especially if they speak on certain issues.

You know, that's that's the that's the reality.

We need empirical research on this question.

But at the end of the day, everyone is claiming to be the supporter.

So so I'll just say to our listeners, right, everyone is claiming to be a supporter of free speech.

Everyone is claiming for diversity of thought.

The question is what actually happens in the classroom?

That's the real question.

Senator Serino says he and others have spent more than a month working on an amended version of Senate Bill 83 to avoid what he called any unintended consequences.

But he says certain things will stay, such as the bans on mandatory DUI training and on ideological litmus tests in hiring.

You can see the full interview with Serino from last week and these interviews this week in our archive at State News dot org.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at state News dot org and follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

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And from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.