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The battle over Issue one's ballot language moves to the Ohio Supreme Court, and the budget sets up independent centers for what's been called intellectual diversity.

At five universities.

The Republican sponsor explains why he says these academic units are needed this week in the state of Ohio and welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Backers of Issue one have filed a lawsuit over the language that voters will see on this fall's ballot, saying the summary the Republicans on the state ballot board approved is inaccurate and biased.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights wants the Ohio Supreme Court to order the language rewritten.

They had asked for the board to just use the 250 word amendment itself.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said that was too long, but his office wrote a summary that was almost that long.

The summary that was adopted by the ballot board is intentionally misleading and fails to meet the standards required by Ohio law.

But the president of Ohio, Right to Life said the board got it right.

Echoing a comment made in the ballot board meeting by Republican Senator Teresa Guevarra.

Though the ballot board is not the forum to discuss the merits of any specific ballot issue.

At the end of the day, they're worried that the average Ohioan is waking up to what this language is, which is actually a bridge too far for even pro-choice Ohioans.

The state budget that was signed in June included $24 million over two years to fund what its backers say are independent academic units at five public universities.

The Salmon Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Ohio State is named for Ohio's 23rd governor, who was also a U.S. senator and Treasury secretary under President Abraham Lincoln.

It was part of Senate Bill 117, along with the Institute of American Constitutional Thought and Leadership, which will be at the University of Toledo College of Law when the budget passed, three more centers were added at Cleveland State, the University of Cincinnati and Miami University.

While the senators are described as independent.

The sponsor of the bill to create them, Republican Senator Jerry Serino, said in a statement after the budget passed that there was nothing like these centers at this scale in any other state and that quote, leftist ideology has a monopoly on most college campuses that is squashing intellectual diversity and punishing wrong think and anti-woke dogma.

But I do not believe the way to cure the leftist bias on campus is by foisting conservative ideology on academia.

I believe the real fix is to ensure neutrality on the part of the instructors and administrators.

Let all sides be heard.

Let students decide for themselves what is true.

Let free speech be preserved and protected.

That is the American way.

It should be taught in our universities again.

Serino is also the sponsor of Senate Bill 83.

That bill would make big changes in public colleges and universities, such as banning most mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion, or D-I training and prohibiting faculty strikes and ideological litmus tests in hiring and admissions.

It would also require faculty to allow intellectual diversity to be expressed on specific controversial issues identified as climate policies, electoral policies, foreign policy, diversity, equity and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage or abortion.

There are other examples around the country, like the Hoover Institute and in California, where where, where schools have been sort of carved out, if you will, for particular purposes.

And the purpose here is, as you note from our past discussions on Senate Bill 83.

You know, there's a lot of concern in the legislature, certainly a lot of concern from from myself relative to the the ability for students of all values and of all perspectives to express themselves.

We know that from recent studies that have been done on schools in Ohio, Ohio State, particularly that the self-censorship among conservative students is extremely high.

And those are the ones who admit it in report it.

So the purpose of these institutes is it's not political.

It is not one side of the spectrum or the other.

It really is to make sure that we can carve out an with a pretty good level of independence to to have these schools set up within the schools, within the universities, of course.

And and to make sure that that the students and the faculty are able to look at things from a neutral standpoint.

In line with the Chicago principles that I believe you're familiar with, the Chicago principals really suggest that students to get a proper education need to understand different points of view, need to have participation in rigorous debate and discussion, and that there's no subjects that are really off limits that from an opinion standpoint and that the faculty needs to develop an beerman in the classroom where students feel free to do those things, to take positions.

And it's actually, I think I think significantly raising the bar for free speech in our universities.

And so we felt that, look, one of the quickest ways to try to move the dial a little bit in our universities, which we know leading from from leading to the left, of course, is to not so much try to go to the right as it is to neutralize things.

And these institutes, we believe, are the best way to get there in a very short period of time.

When you talk about neutrality, who makes the call on neutrality?

How can you guarantee that there will be neutrality in these centers?

Well, let's let's give you an example, Karen.

If if you know, you're teaching economics within one of these institutes, okay.

There needs to be a very careful study of, let's say, the capitalist form of economic theory versus socialism or some other economic theory.

There's probably more than just those two, but those are the two principally that generally compete for each other with each other.

And and I think a professor should make sure that there is a rigorous discussion in research about each of those respective economic models, evaluating historically which ones have done better than the other.

Has one in fact done better than the other?

Which one is the best for promoting an environment of freedom within within a country?

And so, again, I think it's not so much guiding students to take a particular point of view, because that would be indoctrination and that would that would be teaching them what to think.

As you know, from my Senate Bill 83.

My goal is to help students to learn how to think, not so much what to think.

Or the universities where these centers will be located, consulted.

Did they want these institutions?

Well, we have, I think, rather significant discussions with the University of Toledo.

And as you know, that institute is within the law school there.

It's not for the entire university, although other students can in the undergraduate world, can very likely access courses if they wish, or the university can recognize courses within the Institute for Credit in a regular baccalaureate program.

But that was to solve a particular problem that had been pointed out to us through numerous inputs of people that felt that they were had gone through the law school in in felt that things were very much leaning in one direction.

We did not consult with the other universities, although I will tell you there's a part of my development of Senate Bill 83 that was introduced in March.

I have spent an enormous amount of time talking with and meeting with the presidents of every university, every state university, and all of the community colleges as well to to get their input on things in general that certainly relate to some of the concerns we had which led to the institutes.

We decided in the budget just two days before we passed the budget, that we were going to expand from two, which was the original bill, Senate Bill 117 to 5.

And we just we didn't have a lot of time to make consultations.

We we used our best judgment to to select the schools.

And I actually had a couple of schools presidents call me afterwards and tell me that they wish they had been on the list.

So I think that's good feedback.

When you talk about the feedback that you get from people who've come out of these colleges and universities who say that they feel like they were they're being censored, that their opinions aren't being valued.

Is there any data to back that up?

I mean, that's anecdotal in a sense.

So do you have any proof essentially that this is happening in a big way?

Yeah, there's definitely proof, and I'll be happy to send you some of the studies.

There was one done recently by ACTA, which you may be familiar with, and they did it for the last couple of years and very recently I did it for last year in Ohio State University.

And I'm going off the top of my head because they don't have this study handy.

But I will tell you the self censorship rate amongst those declaring themselves as is either moderate or clear conservatives, I believe that was in the 70% to 70% range.

And in the previous study too, that was very similar to that.

And there have been other studies outside of Ohio done.

So it's really not anecdotal.

It is it is it is based on studies that have been done.

I mean, Harvard did one recently as well.

And I'll be happy to send you the information on that one.

But it's clear that there have been some very credible independent studies that suggest that students of the conservative side of things feel that they cannot or should not express themselves for fear of retribution or grades, bad marks on papers, etc.. And I think we would all agree that that should not be the case.

I want to talk to you about some of the budget language which could be seen as vague.

For instance, the center director as we hired by an academic council that will come from a nationwide search of, quote, scholars with relevant expertise and experience.

And the goal is that no fewer than three council members will be from Ohio.

Could this potentially open the door, though, to all of those being political partizan appointees and people from out of state having an influence on Ohio's institutions?

Well, I can tell you, we've already started to get lots of resumes.

I have not solicited resumes because I'm not going to be deciding who, who, who gets proposed.

But some of the presidents have told me they've already gotten a slew of resumes.

And I perused the ones that came to my office.

And we're talking about some seriously well known scholars around the country.

This is not going to be political.

It's not intended to be political.

And just because the Senate has to advise and consent doesn't make it political.

That was what is been set up in the Constitution.

And it's our duty to make sure that we have qualified people that that are going to be in the best interest of the institution.

And so, again, the president of the university will will make recommendations and do all the interviewing and hiring.

They will send those names of the advisory board to the Senate through my committee, and we will review them appropriately, just like we review trustees in and make our make our determinations at that time.

And then the advisory council once in place will then select the director.

And that also has advise and consent from the center.

But again, they'll be interviewed.

People will be selected from the advisory council.

Members of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors are critical of the leadership point and process and of the role of the center director.

They're also concerned that no faculty member will be able to weigh in on curriculum or could block the hiring of other faculty.

They say that could lead to problems with accreditation.

Why is that in there that no faculty member can block the hiring of other faculty?

Well, first of all, we examine the accreditation issue.

And there is there is no issue.

That's a red herring.

Secondly, you know, look, perhaps these people have missed the word independent as we used it in setting these centers up here.

Okay.

Part of the part of the issue that we that has has caused us to want to have these institutes is because the faculties at many of our institutions have not self corrected themselves and have not looked at the problem, identified it, agreed that there is a problem and taken steps.

So why on earth would we want to have the people who we believe have been contributory to creating the environment that is not appropriate?

We think why would we have them involved in selecting the people for for this instant these institutes?

I just think it makes perfect sense.

It's not it's not to disenfranchize them in any way.

It's that we want to be true to the independent nature of these institutes.

You talk about independent nature of the institutes, freedom, free speech and everything.

The budget language says the centers will, quote, educate students by means of free, open and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth.

How do you determine what the limits are of free speech, intellectual freedom, intellectual diversity?

When you're in a university setting where facts need to be taught?

Well, facts should definitely be taught, and particularly in a hard sciences, if that's that's that's a that's a pretty clear understanding.

But look, again, I'll reference back to Senate Bill 83.

When we talked when you and I spoke last was about controversial issues.

Right.

And I'll use the example of a climate policy.

Okay.

So Senate Bill 83 has been modified to include we replaced climate change with climate policy.

And that was just an appropriate correction that I made in the First Amendment to the bill.

So let's let's talk about climate policy, whether no matter where you are on the spectrum of climate change.

There are clearly different views of policies that need to be enacted in order to address whatever level of climate change problem you think there is.

Okay.

And it's those policies that should be carefully debated and evaluated.

There is no one cookie cutter approach to climate policy.

I haven't heard a climate policy suggestion that I think has been properly vetted intellectually.

People seem to be just, you know, jumping on board to whatever the most recent, you know, sort of supermajorities on problem solving for the climate in an environment like the institute, I think there needs to be good discussion and debate over policy initiatives.

What are the real impacts of policy?

What are some of the unintended consequence, like, you know, alternate out of energy, killing off a whole species of whales that we're seeing on the on the East Coast?

It's things like that.

And that's that's a kind of a small example, but, you know, there needs to be debate and there needs to be evaluation of what the facts are.

I don't believe that climate policies right now that are being proposed should be treated as settled science.

Climate change is settled science.

Well, climate change is there is debate.

There are climatologists who debate the level of change or the causes of the change or the impacts of the change.

Remember the tremendously vast use of computer modeling that is used to determine and project what the climate changes actually are.

That should be questioned.

Computer models.

As you know, our models based upon input that human beings put into it and models can be wrong, that the models that the that they developed in the UK uncovered and copied death projections were way off, way off.

And again, it's only as good as the data.

So the fact that there is some climate change, we always have climate change.

I think that is settled.

But the degree of it and the cause of it and the proper solutions, those are things that should still be debated.

You mentioned Senate Bill 83 and I that kind of dovetails into what I wanted to ask you about.

There were some changes that you've talked about that are coming to Senate Bill 83.

And this, of course, is a big education changes bill that would, for instance, ban faculty from striking, remove the mandatory diversity inclusion, equity and inclusion training for most situations.

Let me ask you, what are some of the changes that you're looking at?

This bill was put into the budget by the Senate.

It was taken out of the budget by the Senate because of concerns in passing in the House.

Wanted some changes as this bill makes its way to the House.

Yeah, there are probably three principal changes that are being made in the bill, and I'm working with the chairman of the House committee, Representative Tom Young, whose committee this is in, and he'll be presenting this as a sub bill.

Ultimately, that's the process we have to go through.

But one of the things I did was, you know, originally in the in our version, the Senate version of the bill, we had the no strike provision applying to all unions on campus.

And so what I've done is now changed that.

So it only applies to faculty labor.

It does not apply to the service workers that are on campus, you know, cafeteria workers, you know, maintenance workers, etc..

So my concern, Sharon, is to keep the schools open.

And I don't believe that because I believe there is a contract between the student and the school when they pay for their tuition upfront before the semester starts, that that's a contract.

And because they're their public institutions, it's a contract with the state to nothing should interrupt it, certainly not because some faculty wants to have a better dental plan or a longer sabbatical period.

Those things can be discussed and negotiated separately, but they should not have the power to shut down the school.

And that's that's why I am.

But I've made that change because I think the ancillary unions really are not in a position to shut down the school.

And so we've made that change.

We've also changed and added some some cautions or precautions, I should say, for faculty.

You know, there's been a lot of pushback on the faculty evaluations and the tenure review process.

And so what we've done is we've changed.

We've added actually some sort of review processes so that somebody if somebody feels that they were unfairly evaluated or if their tenure was denied, their tenure extension was denied, that they would have a a process of adjudication to take it up the line all the way to the board of trustees if they felt that they were being, you know, unfairly, you know, dealt with.

We've also changed a small change to me, but I think it was relevant to a lot of people was the students, that percentage of the student evaluations that would be used in the valuation of evaluation on the faculty member.

So remember, in the bill in 83 original form, we had six factors that were going to be used for the performance review and post tenure review instruction was only one of those six of that one.

50% of the evaluation would be comprised of student evaluations.

So some faculty members were out there saying that 50% of their evaluation was going to be based on students.

Well, that's not true.

It's 50% of one sixth of the evaluation criteria.

I changed that to 25% just as an accommodation.

So it's 25% of one sixth of the components for review.

I think giving students an opportunity to play some role in evaluating a professor is appropriate.

And now that we've added the safeguards of appeals that they have, that they feel that students who are ganging up against a professor, that professor can appeal to the chairman, the president, the provost, the president, up to the board of trustees.

I think those were very good accommodations to make, to make the faculty feel more comfortable.

I want to ask you about a questionnaire that was shared with me.

It came from your office.

It would be addressed to newly appointed public university and community college trustees.

It asked basic questions like, Are you a graduate?

Do you have kids at this institution?

It asks for ideas on reducing the cost of higher education, increasing graduation rates.

But it also asks What is your position on the First Amendment rights of faculty, staff and students?

And how will you balance this with promoting diversity of thought on campus?

And also another question, in your view who are you ultimately responsible to serve as trustee of the institution?

You have been appointed to the president, the board, chairperson, or taxpayers of Ohio?

Will these answers be used to screen out certain trustees?

Are you concerned that some people won't want to be trustees if they have to answer these kinds of questions?

Well, we haven't gotten any any pushback from anybody, and we've sent out a slew of them already and we've already received a bunch of them.

And I have to tell you, I've been quite impressed with the answers, not just the answers themselves, but the amount of thought that was apparently put into answering the questions.

And look, the Senate has a responsibility constitutionally for advise and consent of these Governor appointments.

We've worked with the governor's office on this far.

We've worked in tandem with them on this.

And it really is to give us better information so that we can make judgments before we just rubber stamp an appointment.

And there's no right or wrong answer.

I mean, I suppose if somebody answered that, you know, they don't believe in the First Amendment, we probably have a problem with that.

Right.

But we're not going to get any answers like that.

These people are already appointed and already starting to serve.

Our advise and consent comes after the fact.

But look, I think we we'd like to know what they think about education.

Do they strategically view higher education is important.

The last question you mentioned was who are they responsible to?

It's important to note, because I've been a trustee in the past, you know, a lot of times trustees end up thinking that they work for the president of the university or the community college and that's really not the case.

The president works for them.

And sometimes I think that's forgotten.

And in the past, I've known some presidents who like it that way.

Right.

But it's the it's the board of governors, which is the board of trustees of our of our institutions that have ultimate responsible for the mission and direction and performance of those institutions.

And they need to be aware that they're responsible for those things.

It's not just, you know, a nice thing to put on your resumé.

These are generally very accomplished people that get that get appointed.

Right.

But they're not necessarily experts on higher education.

We're just trying to raise the awareness level for them and make sure that we have good information to base our concerns on.

It is not a political litmus test at all.

We have we have approved to appoint and consented to appointments of Democrats as well as Republicans and some many independents as well.

So they will come to my office, they'll go through our committee, and we will use those as a basis to make our to pass it out of committee and then send it to the floor for full approval by the Senate.

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 website at State News dot org or find us online by searching.

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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.