Ohio Applicants Must Disavow Terrorist Ties

By Leigh A. Neithardt

Faculty who are interested in working at one of Ohio’s public universities should double check their applications and make sure that they did not skip the six-question form that requires an affirmation of no connection to organizations defined as “terrorist” by the U.S. Department of State. According to the Division of Ohio Homeland Security, completion of the Declaration of Material Assistance form is required of four categories of applicants, including “all candidates under final consideration for public employment.”

Upon learning that prospective faculty members and graduate teaching assistants at the University of Akron were being asked to complete the broadly worded form, Robert O’Neil, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression and chair of the AAUP’s Special Committee on Academic Freedom and National Security in a Time of Crisis, wrote to Akron president Luis Proenza to express concern (the AAUP subsequently learned that the form is required by all Ohio public universities and not just Akron). The requirement “gravely threatens academic freedom,” O’Neil wrote, adding that “to compel an applicant for a teaching position to declare that he or she has done nothing that ‘one reasonably should have known’ affords material support or resources to a suspect organization seems to revive the specter of disclaimer-type loyalty oaths that were declared unconstitutional in several Supreme Court rulings of the 1960s.”

While a person may choose not to answer a question on the form, it stipulates that “the failure to answer ‘no’ to any question on this declaration shall serve as a disclosure that material assistance to an organization identified on the U.S. Department of State Terrorist Exclusion List has been provided.” If employment is denied on the basis of an individual’s responses, he or she may request a review. However, the request-for-review form implies cooperation with one of the organizations, requiring applicants to specify the organization on the Terrorist Exclusion List to which they provided material assistance.

The forms are “unworkable, unnecessary, and have no place in institutions meant to encourage free thought,” says Jonathan Knight, director of the AAUP’s department of academic freedom, tenure, and governance.

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