Ohio State U Bans Land Acknowledgments Unless Part of Academic Lesson

Ohio State U Bans Land Acknowledgments Unless Part of Academic Lesson

Every red state should follow Ohio and do the same. It’s a stupid and pointless practice.

Inside Higher Ed reports:

Ohio State Bans Most Land Acknowledgments

As of last week, faculty at Ohio State University can no longer make land acknowledgments—verbal or written statements that recognize the Indigenous people who originally lived on the university’s land—unless it is directly relevant to class subject matter.

The new policy from the university’s Office of University Compliance and Integrity is one of many created in response to Ohio’s SB 1, a sweeping higher education law passed in March that seeks to eliminate DEI offices and scrub all mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion from university scholarships, job descriptions and more. The university has also limited student housing decorations in public spaces to “Ohio State spirit themes” and prohibited schools and departments from commenting on a wide array of topics, including the original inhabitants of the land on which the university is built.

Land acknowledgments are “considered statements on behalf of an issue or cause” and cannot be made by someone representing a unit, college or department, according to the new policy. Such statements cannot be used at virtual or in-person university-sponsored events, or written on any university channel, website, social media, signage, meeting agenda or event program. The acknowledgments are also banned from syllabi and class materials and cannot be spoken aloud in the classroom unless they are directly tied to the course, such as in a class about the history of American Indigenous peoples.

“Ohio State respects the history of the state and university and will continue to engage in research, academic scholarship, conversations and opportunities to honor this history, but will not issue statements taking a position on, endorsing, opposing or engaging in advocacy or calls to action around this,” the new policy states.

Ohio State was founded in 1870 as a land-grant university in accordance with the Morrill Act of 1862, by which the U.S. government gifted more than 11 million acres of expropriated Indigenous land to fledgling public universities as capital for the endowments. According to a 2020 investigation by High Country News, Ohio State received 614,325 acres of land—the third-most in the country, behind only Cornell University and Pennsylvania State University—seized or ceded by treaty from more than 100 Indigenous tribes.

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