Organize and Mobilize: Fight Ohio SB 83

This essay was published as an Op-Ed in The Columbus Dispatch on March 16, 2023 and picked up by Yahoo on March 17.

Ohio Senate Bill 83, just introduced in the Ohio Senate at the time of this writing, brings Florida to Ohio in terms of the vicious attacks on higher ed: bans on public university strikes, elimination of academic freedom, and restrictions on/prohibitions of ethnic studies, gender studies curricula.

As The Columbus Dispatch put it

Changes to classroom rules aimed at bias, an end to diversity training mandates, a ban on partnerships with Chinese universities, and mandatory American history courses are all inside a far-reaching bill to change how students learn and professors teach at Ohio’s public colleges and universities.

Known as the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act, Senate Bill 83 would overhaul campus life at Ohio’s 14 public universities and 23 colleges.

The second shoe has been dropping for a while now, but this specific targeting of universities ought to be a loud enough wakeup call for faculty.

So let’s get woke, then.

Might as well embrace the term the political right has demonized as a cover for their racist, anti-feminist, anti-trans, homophobic, anti-union, anti-immigrant, fake free speech agenda.

Seriously. You mean to say these people stand for freedom of speech when they openly use the statehouse to dictate what educators and…