Academic freedom under siege: How state legislatures are reshaping higher education

Abstract

The recent wave of executive orders and other actions at the federal level has received a great deal of attention in recent months. Receiving relatively less attention, however, has been ongoing efforts at the state level over the past couple of years to exercise more control over higher education. The present brief reviews recent state legislation impacting higher education with a particular focus on the recently enacted Ohio Senate Bill 1, as an illustrative example. We suggest that these state legislative efforts pose a threat to academic freedom through attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), curricular control, tenure, and faculty unionization. We provide an overview of these state legislative efforts and implications for I-O psychologists, particularly those in academia.