The Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning and the Center for Ethics and Human Values will host a series of workshop sessions for instructors to implement intellectual diversity into coursework. Credit: Daniel Bush | Campus Photo Editor
Ohio State faculty and staff can virtually attend the first of three Senate Bill 1 workshops for strategies to foster intellectual diversity on Jan. 26.
From noon to 1 p.m. on Zoom, the event will be hosted by the Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning and the Center for Ethics and Human Values, where attendees can reflect on their teaching practices and explore strategies that address SB 1 and encourage multiple viewpoints, according to an announcement from the Drake Institute.
“In the workshop, participants reflect on practices they already use and explore new strategies to foster intellectual diversity, such as through including a breadth of sources and materials, designing assignments, facilitating class discussions on controversial topics, and other class activities that support intellectual diversity,” said Anika Anthony in an email. Anthony is the associate vice provost and director of the Drake Institute.
The workshop was created to address instructors’ questions about how to interpret the law’s expectations for supporting intellectual diversity in teaching, Anthony said.
Passed in June 2025, SB 1 bans diversity, equity and inclusion programming and limits the teaching of controversial subjects, per prior Lantern reporting. Ohio State issued a timeline of its bill compliances detailing changes to university policy through the Office of University Compliance and Integrity.
Much controversy arose around the bill’s language surrounding the instruction of “controversial topics,” along with the impact of the eliminated initiatives, according to prior Lantern reporting.
Anthony said in an email that part of the workshop includes a reminder that SB 1 does not prohibit in-class discussion of controversial issues.
Anthony said that the workshop plans to show how to include intellectual diversity in course descriptions and syllabi, class announcements, statements of teaching philosophy and rationale and instructions for class activities and discussions.
Aaron Yarmel, associate director of the ethics center, said in an email the workshops are meant to help faculty and staff build confidence in making class decisions since SB 1’s passing.
“Generally speaking, faculty find that our workshops make them less afraid of SB 1 and better-equipped to teach in ways that promote intellectual diversity without sacrificing academic freedom,” Yarmel said.
If not available, instructors can attend the Feb. 23 and March 30 sessions on the same topic, according to BuckeyeLearn’s event calendar.
The Drake Institute is offering other workshops and dialogue sessions to navigate difficult conversations. In addition, the ethics center released a guide to help instructors who are seeking a framework and expectations to navigate civil discourse in the classroom post-SB 1.
Yarmel said that while these workshops can help faculty better navigate concerns with SB 1, some may still have reservations going forward, and fully understanding the law’s impact on intellectual diversity requires listening to those concerns.
“I have met professors who are planning to avoid exploring controversial topics because they are afraid of the social and professional consequences of a contextually innocuous in-class comment being taken out of context. Risk assessments of this kind are deeply personal,” Yarmel said in an email.
Yarmel said these kinds of workshops are not a requirement of SB 1’s legislation or of Ohio State’s compliance rollout initiative, rather “part of a long-standing [the ethics center] tradition of offering resources to help faculty facilitate dialogue in ways that foster intellectual diversity.”
“Thanks to this tradition, Ohio State is well-positioned to respond to SB1 without the need to develop anything new,” Yarmel said.
