Ohio State professor who attacked a journalist is charged with assault

The Ohio State University professor who works in the center tasked with educating “students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth” and is accused of tackling an independent journalist on campus was served a summons on a charge of assault.

Ben Johnson, the university spokesman, told The Lantern in an email that Luke Perez, an assistant professor at the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society was officially notified on Feb. 13 that he must appear in court.

Perez allegedly attacked Mike Newman, an independent documentarian, in a hallway at Smith Laboratory after Newman attempted to interview former Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee after his speech in Perez’s class. According to reports, Perez is on leave.

The Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society was established by Senate Bill 117, proposed by state Sens. Jerry C. Cirino, R-Kirtland, and Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, and signed into law by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.

The center was established as “an independent academic unit” within the university that “shall conduct teaching and research in the historical ideas, traditions, and texts that have shaped the American constitutional order and society,” according to the Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules.

The center was supposed to “educate students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth,” as well as “affirm the value of intellectual diversity in higher education and aspire to enhance the intellectual diversity of the university.”

According to the law, the center must also “affirm a commitment to create a community dedicated to an ethic of civil and free inquiry, which respects the intellectual freedom of each member, supports individual capacities for growth, and welcomes the differences of opinion that shall naturally exist in a public university community.”

In an op-ed, Cirino promoted the bill as a free-speech tool.

“Senate Bill 117 is historic because it establishes independent academic centers at five of Ohio’s public universities. That is unique because there is nothing like it, at this scale, in any other state. The bill is needed because ideology is replacing the lessons of history on campus,” he wrote. “And the fewer students learn about and embrace America’s founding principles and ideals, the more free speech is disappearing from our citadels of higher education and, subsequently, our entire nation.”

Even though Cirino acknowledged that “leftist ideology has a monopoly on most college campuses that is squashing intellectual diversity and punishing wrongthink and anti-woke dogma,” the solution to the problem is not to prevent left-wingers from speaking out and enforcing the conservative talking points, but rather making colleges and universities politically neutral places.

“Let all sides be heard. Let students decide for themselves what is true. Let free speech be preserved and protected. That is the American way. It should be taught in our universities again,” he wrote.