Last month, Ohio legislators passed Senate Bill 1, which bans diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices and initiatives at the state's public universities. In compliance, the University of Toledo recently announced it is suspending admission into more than 20 of its graduate and undergraduate programs, including Africana Studies, Asian Studies, Disability Studies, and Middle East Studies.
Campus Reform explains this means the University of Toledo will not be accepting any new students to enter these programs, though students can still minor in them.
Linda Harvey, president of Mission: America, says most of the colleges and universities in Ohio are already either closing or reducing their DEI staffs, but she calls this "a very positive move for the students, the faculty, and the intellectual climate in the state of Ohio."
"There is so much … waste, fraud, and abuse of scholarship at these higher ed. institutions," she says. "They're wasting time on these nonsensical programs."
Senate Bill 1 also requires universities get rid of degrees that lawmakers consider underperforming.
"All the colleges and universities in the country, frankly, should eliminate these degree programs based on critical theory," Harvey submits. "That's really the basis of Women's Studies, African Studies, Queer and Gender Studies – they're all kind of pointless and worthless."
She says those courses have one thing in common.
"The framework of these programs is really grievances; they frame so much of history as oppression versus oppressors," she summarizes. "So much of the coursework is based not on historical fact, but on fantasy."
Harvey is "very excited" that classroom hours will no longer be spent dwelling on what she equates to "middle school gossip."
