Against Government Overreach? Reject Ohio Senate Bill 1!
As Ohio Senate Bill 1 heads to the House for a vote this Wednesday, one thing is clear: Republicans have renounced their historical critique of “Big Government.”
While paying lip service to the idea, the actions of Republicans from the federal government to the states has revealed a different truth: Republicans are against Big Government as long as they are not in control. The minute they are, they gravitate towards it, using its power as often and as directly as they choose–free speech, citizenship laws, and civil rights be damned.
I don’t think a single Republican politician in Ohio, at this point, is open to a calm and rational discussion about SB1. Either they are behind it or they are afraid to stand up to their collegues and speak their truth.
Be that as it may, I will carry on, hoping that at least some Republicans are left who believe their own ideological rhetoric about individual rights and freedoms. And if so, I hope they consider the utter contradiction inherent in supporting SB1 and saying you are against Big Government and “government overreach.”
And I hope they consider the even deeper hypocrisy that SB1 applies only to public universities and not to private ones. As I suggest, this reveals a nasty class politics that engages in a war on liberal arts education — but only if you are a working class Ohioan. The life of the mind, in this rendition, is only for those who can afford and/or get into private schools.
Fighting Government Overreach: A Deeply Held Conservative Value
Look up “government overreach” on the internet, and you’ll find, again and again, that it’s something conservatives are against.
For instance, when U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican from Wisconsin, introduced a bill to limit the EPA’s influence in the chemical industry, the headlines read: “Grothman takes Aim at Government Overreach.”
When Ohio Attorney General David Yost sought to check the SEC, he claimed it was to limit “federal overreach” — saying the government was acting beyond its constitutional mandate.
On February 19, the official page of the White House portrayed U.S. president Trump as someone who “reins in government overreach” through his many executive orders, firings, and funding freezes.
Then why aren’t conservatives lining up against Ohio Senate Bill 1, which gives the state government unprecedented control over the content faculty teach in the classroom?
Why are those who allegedly seek to control government interference ok with using government power when it comes to dictating academic knowledge, even at the risk of trampling on free speech?
Ideology or Necessity?
Proponents of SB1 might respond in this way: (1) public colleges and universities in Ohio are already under the statehouse and this is not technically “overreach,” and (2) their restrictions on diversity training and surveillance of curriculum is necessary to truly expand freedom of thought.
In this view, the government is being used to fight university bureaucracy and “indoctrination.”
But conservative citizens and legislators ought to scrutinize such claims. Political spin is being used to camouflage an egregious example of government overreach.
Yes, public education has always been under the jurisdiction of the government. But why is it that, for so many decades, universities were allowed to exist in relative autonomy in matters of curriculum? Why is it that the universities’ many systems of evaluation and review were seen as sufficient?
Education hasn’t changed — the political winds have. Since Donald Trump’s fall 2020 speech establishing the short-lived “1776 Commission,” politicians in state and now federal governments can’t wait to get their hands on education policy. Demonizing educators and alternating buzzwords (remember the fight against “CRT,” now replaced by “DEI” and “gender ideology”?) has become essential for building political capital.
In that sense, it’s classic government interference and overreach. A desire to control universities and break the tradition of shared governance that has run them. Not for any legitimate reason — we know there are many things in the corporate university that need fixing — but for political ones.
These projects are driven by ideology, not necessity.
Similarly, the argument that SB1 will enhance and not restrict free speech is based on the false and unproven premise that faculty are indoctrinating students — a charge even Governor DeWine and Lt-Governor Jim Tressel say they don’t believe.
Instead of faculty who have spent their lives doing research and teaching, SB1 implies, “government knows best” — and will protect the flat-earth conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers who, apparently, fill our classrooms.
Myths about Indoctrination
The reality is that our classrooms are relatively open spaces for dialogue, and introduce students to a range of thought that simply is not available in many places outside the university. Pro-SB1 legislators are frightened by this spectrum of ideas, and cannot think of any other way of shutting them down than using government power.
It certainly is true that many students hesitate to speak in class. Sometimes it’s because they have an idea they think the professor doesn’t like. Quite often, it’s because they are simply developing the confidence to speak in front of others — which is quite natural. I don’t know a single professor who wouldn’t encourage a student to speak up, regardless of what they had to say, or help them build their confidence to find their own voices.
That’s how you better classroom culture for students — not by using the government to shut down faculty.
Conservatives of the past would roll in their graves if they heard that today’s Republicans are using Big Government strategies to squash ideas they don’t like — and to build support for conservative ideas. As we are seeing with the Chase Center at Ohio State, forced onto the university despite the opposition of faculty, students, and staff in the University Senate.
I’m not sure campuses are as liberal as they are made out to be. Ohio State, for instance, is as mainstream as it gets. Yes, as at all campuses through history, the range of ideas and practices available is far wider than in society at large. But a support of intellectual diversity, as SB1 supporters claim to be, would not be theatened by this!
Even if proponents of SB1 are correct about liberal bias on campuses — which would be a product of youth culture and not indoctrination — one would think that supporters of free markets and capitalist values would encourage conservative scholars and thinkers to rise to the top on the strength of their own merit, not by a government handout like SB1.
An Attack on Working Class Students
A clue to the political calculations behind this bill can be found in the fact that in the first iteration of SB 83 — the failed predecessor of SB1 — the bill was written to include both public and private colleges and universities.
And why not? If diversity is bad, as the bill says, it’s bad in both private and public colleges, too. Why shouldn’t all students in Ohio be subject to the same government benevolence? The state government governs private colleges too, after all.
But the proponents of SB 83 quickly pivoted away from restricting the curriculum and programs of private colleges and universities in Ohio. Not because of any principle, but because the bill’s mandates of “intellectual diversity” might trouble political alliances.
As reported in Cleveland.com regarding SB83: “Many private schools that are affiliated with faith organizations said that it would be hard to espouse their religious beliefs and comply with [SB] 83.” If intellectual diversity was truly the goal, and the bill was not government overreach but an even handed correction, why shouldn’t faith oriented colleges be forced to do this too?
SB1 just avoided the whole issue by never raising the specter of private school compliance in the first place.
This bill has nothing to do with balance, and everything to do with selectively using government power to shape education, and erode the power of faculty in the classroom.
Class Politics and Liberal Arts Education
There might be another reason for the focus on “correcting” public education while leaving the private colleges alone: a disregard for the intellectual growth of working class and middle class Ohio students.
SB83, like the current SB1, was deeply anti-union and anti-working class — as seen in the restrictions on what unions could bring to the negotiating table, not to speak of the anti-strike policy.
Politicians have no problem restricting the scope of education for students in public schools, but hesitate to do that for wealthier students in private schools. These restrictions, almost inevitably, focus on classes in the humanities and arts — as if only wealthy students should enjoy these subjects.
SB 1 supporters talk as if universities should just become technical or trade schools that teach students what they need to get jobs. Of course, I support the choice of students who decide they want to focus on learning a trade — and agree that all colleges and universities should give students the tools and skills they need to get good jobs.
At the same time, universities like the one I have taught at for more than 20 years are based on the idea that an all around education is beneficial to students. And that such skills are actually essential in the 21st-century workplace, too.
SB1 is really an assault on the whole idea of a liberal arts education. The idea that people of all social classes — including working class and middle class people — can ready and study ideas for their own self-reflection and knowledge,
Education is not just about breadwinning, but also about the life of the mind. In the West, this idea goes back to the Greeks and then the Renaissance: the arts, philosophy, literature, the social sciences, the hard sciences and all of these fields are essential for students to be exposed to so they can stretch their thinking and learn to value something beyond the skills that brings in their wages.
The attack on liberal arts in public schools comes from class bias. They want to turn colleges into factories for turning out skilled labor: they could care less about what else students need. They are like Henry Ford, who famously complained, “Why is it that every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?”
Even if we only think of students as the next generation of workers, we should be asking a different question: can we afford to deny Ohio students the histories, cultural knowledge, and practical experience they will need to effectively operate and succeed in our diverse 21st century world?
Free Education from Political Repression
We know that life is not just about dollars and cents, but much much more. We know that what gives us satisfaction extends beyond the workday. We know that bringing in a paycheck is essential — — and yet what brings us meaning in life lies outside of the workday. A liberal arts education at public universities is meant to introduce a whole range of students to the life of the mind from the very beginnings of their adulthood.
The politicians supporting SB1 have a very different idea of education. And they are welcome to it. But they are using their power in government to transform and destroy what generations of educators and students have built.
That’s what government overreach in education is. Using government power to selectively contrail and restrict curriculum — particularly against working class students. Any conservative opposed to government overreach should look critically at this bill and stand up against it.
