Cirino’s Senate Bill 83 is a step toward neutralizing liberal bias on campus: Ted Diadiun

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 15, 2023, before signing a bill that blocks public colleges from using federal or state funding on diversity programs, as Republicans across the country -- including in Ohio -- target programs on diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. Today, columnist Ted Diadiun applauds the trend and praises state Sen. Jerry Cirino for his proposed Senate Bill 83, which has cleared the Ohio Senate and is pending in the Ohio House. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)AP

CLEVELAND -- Much of the time when you read or hear about the liberal bias that exists on today's college campuses, it is accompanied by the words "alleged," or "perceived," or "purported." Indeed, the headline and opening paragraph in a recent cleveland.com story on the anti-bias Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act that is currently making its way through the Ohio legislature refers to the "perceived liberal bias" in our universities.

You’ve got to work pretty hard to be skeptical about whether liberal – or progressive, politically correct, "woke," whatever you want to call it – domination holds overwhelming sway across our nation's campuses.

And in fact, you don't have to work hard at all to find evidence of liberal bias and its cousin, the proliferation of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) training that is being rammed down the throats of college staff and faculty and often used as a filter for anyone hoping to be hired on.

The relatively small percentage of conservatives on college faculties, and the few students willing to admit their conservative leanings, certainly believe it. To wit:

A wide-ranging 2021 report by University of London professor and political scientist Eric Kaufmann conducted for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology showed, among much else, that 70% of conservative scholars self-censor, shying away from comments that might go against the liberal consensus to protect their jobs.

As he revealed in a 2021 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Kaufmann found that in the humanities, academics on the left in the United States and Canada outnumber those on the right by a ratio of 14 to one.

It is no mystery why more liberals than conservatives might be drawn to the humanities, but the troubling thing is the strong instinct among too many liberals to censor or punish those in the minority who hold opposing political views.

A Newsweek story about the study cited Kaufmann's findings that one in four academics believe their colleagues who express contrary opinions on political issues – restricting immigration for one example – should be fired.

Kaufmann said his research showed that 40% of American academics said they would not hire a known Donald Trump supporter, and he cited another study by the National Association of Scholars that recorded 65 instances of professors being disciplined or fired over something they’d said or written.

Examples are everywhere, and it's not only in humanities:

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of all places, 40% of faculty say they are more likely to self-censor than they were just two years ago, and 41% of students say they aren't confident in the administration's ability to protect controversial speech, according to recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.

That followed MIT's embarrassing 2021 cancellation of an honorary lecture from Dorian Abbot, a national expert on climate change, after a cadre of professors and graduate students objected to his expressed opinions in opposition to the way DEI training was being implemented on campus.

Abbot, of the University of Chicago, explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he believes in "evaluating people for positions based on their individual qualities, not on membership in favored or disfavored groups."

At Georgetown, constitutional law expert Ilya Shapiro's 2021 hiring as a senior lecturer and executive director at the university's Center for the Constitution was put on hold when he inartfully tweeted that President Joe Biden was focused on nominating a "lesser" Black woman to the Supreme Court rather than the "objectively best pick." He was eventually reinstated (only because he wasn't an employee when he made the offending remarks) but declined to work under a cloud and resigned.

Just down the road from Cleveland, at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, law professor Scott Gerber is currently fighting for his job because, he wrote in The Wall Street Journal, he said that "DEI efforts that don't include viewpoint diversity" would lead to illegal discrimination in employment and admissions.

There is not a thing in the world wrong with diversity, equity or inclusion – as words, ideas, values or goals. The problem arises when DEI dogma is used as a bludgeon to force people to mouth platitudes they might not fully believe, or to exclude them if they resist.

Here's an example from Texas Tech University, where a search committee penalized a candidate for espousing race-neutrality in teaching: A Wall Street Journal op-ed from February by John D. Sailor of the National Association of Scholars quotes the evaluation as noting that the candidate "mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally. This indicates a lack of understanding of equity and inclusion issues."

In the wake of all this, enter State Sen. Jerry Cirino of Kirtland, the prime sponsor of the aforementioned Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act. The bill aims at making state-funded colleges and universities safe for First Amendment rights among conservative faculty and students.

The bill, which has passed the Senate and is currently awaiting debate in the House, is "simply designed to ensure free expression on campus and in the classroom," said Cirino.

Among other things, the bill would end mandated diversity training (but not prohibit such training), prevent colleges from using DEI as a litmus test in hiring, prohibit gifts from China or organizations acting on behalf of the Chinese government, prevent faculty and staff from striking during labor disputes, and add a required government course for all students that includes reading and understanding the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Emancipation Proclamation, Federalist Papers, Gettysburg Address and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from A Birmingham Jail."

But the main thrust of the bill is directed at protecting "intellectual diversity" – ensuring that nobody is censured or punished for expressing opinions on a wide range of social, political and religious topics. It requires an official affirmation from the institution that such freedom will be protected.

Predictably, liberal institutions across the state and most media, including the editorial board of The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com, have strongly criticized the bill, something Cirino finds puzzling.

"This bill is about adhering to the Chicago Principles – true diversity of opinion, no indoctrination, teaching students how to think and analyze," he said. "Not liberal, not conservative – everyone. How can opponents of this bill be against more diversity?"

He said he was stung by some of the criticisms he's received, including his alleged depiction of the bill's opponents as "clowns."

"I did use that word, but that was not my complete comment," he said. "We listened to seven and a half hours of testimony from opponents of the bill, and most were respectful and well-meaning. A small number were rude and disrespectful, including one tenured professor from Miami University who gave me the middle finger as he left. Those were the ones I called clowns."

Cirino said he spoke with many professors and students who did not want to testify for the bill because of their fear of reprisal, but one who did was Peter W. Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, who spoke on the need for this legislation:

"Colleges and universities almost all proclaim their commitment to academic freedom," he said. "But they don't mean it. We see that in the effective prohibition of debate on contentious topics and in what is now called compelled speech. And we see it when college authorities turn a blind eye to the bullying and shoutdowns that so often foreclose expression of disfavored views."

There are too many cases of campus bullying, both in Ohio and around the nation. Cirino's bill is a step in the right direction.

Ted Diadiun is a member of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

To reach Ted Diadiun: [email protected]

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