Is it better to be taught how to think or be taught what to think? This is one of the key arguments in Trump 2.0 decisions to withhold federal grant monies and support state laws to fashion a new learning process within US colleges and universities. 

Varied studies suggest that less than 10% of faculty at US colleges and universities vote Republican. Could faculty at US colleges and universities, knowingly or unknowingly, be imparting liberal ideologies into the topics they teach to students? 

New requirements to impose intellectual diversity and controversial beliefs practices on US college and university campuses is a means to encourage students on how to think and not what to think. Ohio, for example, established a 2025 law entitled “Advance Ohio Higher Education Act” ORC 3345.0217. All colleges and universities within Ohio are now releasing policies to comply with the new law.

Definitions

To comply with the new Act, for example, the University of Toledo created its “Intellectual Diversity and Controversial Beliefs” Policy Number 3364-71-33, effective September 25, 2025. Definitions in UT’s new policy include:

“Controversial belief or policy” means any belief or policy that is the subject of political controversary, including issues such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.

“Intellectual diversity” means multiple, divergent, and varied perspectives on an extensive range of public policy issues.

I encourage you to locate some of these policies online (just enter the Ohio university of interest, such as, The Ohio State University, and include intellectual diversity policy 2025) then review the details. This article only will summarize a few key points of these policies. For example:

• DEI is incompatible with intellectual diversity policies and is prohibited by law.
• Debate on controversial beliefs is encouraged.
• Faculty and staff shall not seek to indoctrinate any social, political, ideological, or religious point of view.
• The university will seek out invited speakers who have diverse ideological or political views.

What are these policies trying to achieve? 

Consider my recent experience: In July 2025, I attended an inaugural Zoom meeting for a new non-profit organization established in Ohio. The organizer invited people to the meeting that he believed had an interest to qualify and quantify the role of an “industrial hygienist,” as that term is described in the final rule for the Implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, found in the April 19, 2024, Federal Register. Invited attendees were asked if they would like to serve on the board for the new organization and help steer its direction. I declined to serve on the board, believing my presence would stifle new thinking. I agreed to serve only as a technical advisor. To get to the point, one attendee had an MPH, CIH®, CSP® and was a long-term member of AIHA. She served two separate terms as president for an Ohio section of the AIHA. Early in the group discussion she commented, “If AIHA doesn’t support this concept, I do not want to serve on this board!” To which I commented, “AIHA is the problem, not the solution.” The meeting fell apart at that point. She was not interested in my point of view. She was not interested in a debate.

Debate

In my recent ISHN article on Conflict Mitigation I wrote, “I believe AIHA’s efforts to ‘infuse DEI throughout the Association’ along with misapplication of psychological safety practices stifled members’ appetite to render free speech, that leads to stifled innovation, such as not providing public comment on the PWFA final rules.” That sentence was my reasoning why OHS elites, that I define as having STEM academic training and usually holding the CIH®, with the example above, refuse to engage me in a debate, particularly on the merits and controversial beliefs found within the PWFA. 

Qualifications

Just so you are aware, I currently serve (and have served since its inception over a decade ago) on the Master of Science in Occupational Health Advisory Committee at the University of Toledo. I taught OHS courses for the University of Toledo and Bowling Green State University, both in Ohio. I pay close attention to what particularly industrial hygiene students across our nation are learning and how what they learn translates to the work environment. My perspectives on intellectual diversity and controversial beliefs presented in this article are mine alone. From my perspective, liberal values that students acquire from the college and university experience have trickled over into the work environment. 

For example, colleges and universities that have programs in OHS usually have faculty that are members of AIHA, that knowingly or unknowingly, create a pipeline for students to pursue a membership in AIHA and attend and present research at AIHA annual conferences, as they may believe is necessary for professional growth. My debate includes that AIHA no longer represents the modern concepts of industrial hygiene. Students should be informed of AIHA’s faults rather than hear only about its praise.

How to think

OHS pros must decipher how elements within the September 2025 “Strategy Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again” will impact them and the organizations they represent. Contained within the 20 pages of the strategy report (searchable online) is much of the OHS future requiring your preparation and understanding. MAHA’s strategy report, for example, includes reforming “medical school curriculum and accreditation” by bringing in “competing accreditors of medical education programs.” What do you think is the end objective of this example? The end objective will trickle over into what is taught in OHS courses. Contrast what you find in the MAHA strategy report with AIHA’s public policy priorities found in the blog “AIHA Advocacy in a Time of Unprecedented Change March 2025.” AIHA’s checker tactics are being trumped (excuse the pun) by MAHA chess strategies. 

Conclusion

Being loyal to group think has merits but it also has limits. AIHA, as used as an example for this article, is but one of our OHS organizations that should begin to embrace the rise of intellectual diversity and controversial beliefs, as demonstrated in the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act.

To the CIH® used as an example in this article, you are not an anomaly but a trend that I have observed during the past two years. As demonstrated in new Ohio law, debates are encouraged, and all sides of a person’s beliefs must be explored with an open mind. These seeds begin during the higher learning years and should carry over until our OHS career ends.

Politics invade everything an OHS pro does. Does the OHS profession as a whole lean to having greater liberal or conservative values? Do OHS elites lean politically more one way than another. Politics in the long run should have limited influence with our goals to prevent or lessen injuries or illness that arise in or from the workplace. What matters most is to embrace innovation and continually improve.