The centers would give students the option to learn from a variety of views, but this idea has still drawn opposition from some academics, including the Ohio American Association of University Professors.
Senate Bill 117, which has been submitted to the Senate Committee, listed various goals, including to “to create a community dedicated to an ethic and civil and free inquiry” and to “educate students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth.”
The idea for the center at the University of Toledo came from law professor Lee Strang, who had an appointment at a similar center at Princeton University run by Professor Robert George.
“When I was a visiting scholar at the James Madison Program at Princeton University, it was an intentional place for a wide variety of viewpoints by scholars, students, and members of the community,” Strang told The College Fix on a phone call. “It had been a long time since I experienced such a rich, diverse, academic environment. I wanted to create something like that for my faculty and students in Ohio.”
“SB 117 provides a structure and resources to create these sort of institutional spaces for scholars, students, and the community, at Ohio’s public universities,” Strang said. “Public universities were created by Ohio citizens for Ohio citizens, so they should include Ohio’s rich diversity of viewpoints to enhance student education and faculty academic discussion.”
Republican state senators Jerry Cirino and Rob McColley stated the intellectual diversity centers would assist in Ohio universities changing the current “structural preponderance of one line of thought,” according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
