Parents Defending Education Action Applauds Senator Jerry Cirino for Introducing Senate Bill 461: The Strengthening Ohio Civics Act

August 4, 2026

In recent decades, American higher education has abandoned courses that focus on the historical and literary foundations of Western civilization, depriving students of courses that explore the intellectual influences that animate the American experiment. In its place, activist academics have created a fragmented curriculum featuring classes that highlight the grievances of ostensibly oppressed groups and intellectually unserious topical courses surveying popular culture, entertainment, sports, and fashion. Universities in Ohio are no exception.

Fortunately, five public universities in Ohio house highly regarded civic centers that reject the cynical and pedantic courses that exemplify the modern university curriculum. The Institute of American Constitutional Thought and Leadership at the University of Toledo, the Center for Civics, Culture and Society at Cleveland State University, the Center for Civics, Culture, and Workforce Development at Wright State University, the Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at Miami University, and the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at Ohio State University illuminate the historical ideas, traditions, and texts that have shaped the American constitutional order and society in a learning environment that prioritizes academic rigor, intellectual diversity, and an ethic of civil and free inquiry.

Senate Bill 461 reinforces Ohio’s clear commitment to excellence in higher education. Ohio created these civics centers to teach students real civic literacy and is now giving them the institutional footing to do so. This bill designates the state’s five centers to teach Ohio’s mandatory civic literacy course, granting them the autonomy of an independent college to do so well. This is exactly what Ohio students deserve.

– Reagan Dugan, Director of Higher Education Initiatives, Defending Education

Unfortunately, academic centers, particularly those that refuse to kowtow to the dominant political or intellectual ideologies of university faculty, often do not receive equitable treatment from university administrators and trustees. To remedy this disparity, Senate Bill 461 would allow these centers to receive all the rights and privileges of an independent college of their respective universities, including the right to grant promotion and tenure without external interference, to receive adequate financial support, and to exercise institutional and programmatic autonomy.

Senate Bill 461 also ensures that the civic literacy course mandated by Senate Bill 1 is taught by the civics centers themselves, rather than being diluted across a patchwork of loosely related departmental offerings. Designating the centers as the exclusive providers of this course guarantees that every Ohio student who fulfills this graduation requirement does so through rigorous, text-based instruction.

It is time for the Ohio Legislature to level the playing field for the state’s outstanding network of civic centers, and The Strengthening Ohio Civics Act does just that.

Sincerely,

Terry Stoops

Director of Government Affairs

Defending Education