State Sen. Jerry Cirino (photo, left; profile here), an Ohio Republican, is sponsoring a bill that “designates climate policy as a ‘controversial belief or policy.’”
On a purely abstract plane, a climate “belief or policy” could be controversial if, say, it posits that climate change is a hoax. But that isn’t what Cirino has in mind; he wants to stifle discussion of climate change in Ohio’s public universities (see story here).
That’s evident from the fact that, having designated climate science a “controversial belief,” his bill goes on to say “faculty must ‘encourage students to reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs,'” quite plainly meaning professors can’t teach climate science.
Across the country, Republican politicians like Cirino are trying to interject rightwing politics into academia. It’s a very disturbing trend, and not just because it infringes on academic freedom, but also because the underlying intent is to suppress climate science.
“You can say gravity isn’t true, but if you step off the cliff, you’re going down,” says Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University. She adds, “And if you teach other people that gravity is not true, you are morally responsible for anything that happens to them if they make decisions based on the information you provided.”
Not really. Republicans aren’t being held morally responsible for much of anything. Certainly not Covid-19 deaths, or gun deaths, even though their policies are responsible for both.
Cirino has cheekily labeled college professors “opponents of intellectual diversity” for teaching scientific truth. Falsehoods aren’t intellectual diversity, they’re falsehoods.
He was asked “if college faculty would be required to teach both sides of the question of whether the Holocaust happened.” He replied, “Nobody should be shouted down.” That’s nice in principle, but the Holocaust is a historical reality, and Holocaust denialism doesn’t merit equal time in places of learning.
Climate change is real, too. But climate denialism dies hard, and deniers like Cirino are trying to postpone a reckoning by interfering with academia’s truth-finding processes and educational functions. It’s not like he’s interested in honest inquiry. This is about stifling scientific truth and giving climate liars equal time. That’s not what you want a legislature doing to a taxpayer-funded university. That’s their university, not his.