A divided Ohio State University Senate voted against approving Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society that a conservative scholar was selected to run.
But that won't stop the state-mandated "intellectual diversity" center from opening.
The university senate, made up of faculty, students, staff and administrators, voted 64 to 57 against creating the Chase Center. Four people abstained from voting and others were absent on Thursday.
The Chase Center was initiated by a 2023 state law that called for an "independent academic unit" at OSU to teach and research the American constitution. Ohio State has already hired conservative legal scholar Lee Strang to run the center.
The state law gives the center $5 million in funding in each of its first two years of operation and calls for the creation of 15 tenure-track professorships.
"There's been strong agreement among us that the legislative justification for the Chase Center — that teaching and research at Ohio State is ideologically biased rather than evidence-based — is based on fundamentally false premises. We all have agreed on that," said University Senate Faculty Council Chair Sara Watson, an associate professor of political science.
Watson said, however, the university council's vote was "less unified."
She said some saw the vote as an opportunity to show their "strong rejection" of the legislative intent that created the center. Others saw the center as inevitable and argued it was important to engage with it and make sure it operates with Ohio State's norms and values.
"For me, the vote is sad in that I would really like shared governance to be a partner in the Chase Center," said Jared Gardner, an English professor and secretary of the university senate. As secretary, Gardner doesn't vote on senate matters.
Gardner said he believes the Chase Center will bring something to the university "beyond any of the political issues."
Gardner originally taught late 18th and early 19th century American literature and culture and history. He sees the Chase Center as a potential opportunity to return to those topics.
Watson acknowledged that there are "strong crosswinds" facing Ohio State and higher education, including uncertainty about research funding and state legislation that targets diversity, equity and inclusion in colleges and universities.
This week, a bill introduced in the Ohio senate resurrected what had been Senate Bill 83 in the previous general assembly. Now Senate Bill 1, the Republican-backed bill seeks to combat what conservatives view as liberal ideology in higher education.
"I know we had our differences yesterday, but I really hope that despite our disagreement around the Chase vote, that the entire university community can come together as a unified group," Watson said.
Gardner said he does not think the introduction of Senate Bill 1 impacted the outcome of Thursday's University Senate vote.
"I would never want to disrespect my senators by suggesting that they were simply voting in reaction to something announced the previous day," Gardner said. "They've been working very hard on this, thinking about it, talking about it for months and months."
