Santa J. Ono’s politically charged bid to assume the presidency of the University of Florida ended in dramatic fashion Tuesday when the State University System of Florida’s Board of Governors voted not to approve his appointment. The vote was a victory for conservative critics who had decried Ono’s past stances — including his support for diversity, equity, and inclusion measures — that he has since disavowed.
Board members peppered Ono on Tuesday with sharp questions about his track record, which he answered with now-familiar defenses. A similar dynamic prevailed during a recent meeting of the Gainesville campus’s trustees, who grilled the former University of Michigan president but ultimately voted to hire him, pending the Board of Governors’ approval. That approval didn’t come; the board members voted 10 to 6 against his appointment.
Ono, whose three-year tenure in Ann Arbor was the shortest in the university’s history, was named sole finalist for the Florida job in May.
At the beginning of his tenure at Michigan, and in previous stops, Ono was known for his constant interaction on social-media sites and with the campus community, including crowd-surfing during a football game at the University of Cincinnati. He got along well with donors and other outside constituents but was dogged by controversies over union contracts, the campus’s diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus, and pro-Palestinian protests and encampments.
The university dismantled its central DEI office earlier this year, a move Ono touted as he pursued the job in Gainesville. Still, his earlier views on that issue and others raised red flags with several prominent conservatives who argued he shouldn’t be president because he wasn’t conservative enough and would stop Florida’s efforts to reshape higher education.
Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a trustee at New College of Florida, was among the loudest voices in opposition to Ono. After the board vote, he took to social media and also sent out a note to his followers, claiming “another scalp” in the effort to “recapture academic institutions.”
“We conducted an investigation, generated a strong media narrative, and made the case that Ono was a captured left-wing ideologue who would jeopardize Florida’s reputation as the place ‘where woke goes to die.’ Our efforts succeeded,” he wrote.
Before the vote, Florida’s board spent hours confronting Ono with question after question, all centered around his past practices on controversial social issues and his current beliefs, which Ono said had changed since he’d taken the reins in Ann Arbor. Looming largest was the former president’s past support for DEI initiatives at Michigan.
“I support fully, the decision to end DEI,” he said in his opening statement. “I’m here to ensure DEI never returns to the University of Florida. Science will lead, not ideology. I want to come to Florida, not to slow reform, but to accelerate it. Public universities exist to educate, not indoctrinate.”
But many board members remained skeptical.
“Typically when you are hiring a president, we go on a body of work,” Governor Timothy M. Cerio said, adding that it was hard to discern the difference between Ono’s actions over a lengthy academic career and what he now said he believed, including views that had apparently changed in the past several months. “The bottom line is we have to figure out if you mean it or is it a pivot to get a job?”
Ono spent much of the meeting repeating similar lines and also dodging direct answers, saying in some cases that he wasn’t qualified to opine. When Governor Carson Good pressed him on Covid vaccine mandates — pointing out that as an immunologist, he must have an opinion — Ono answered: “I’m a mouse doctor,” adding, “I’m a test tube kind of guy.”
Multiple board members came prepared to put Ono in the hot seat, citing documents, speeches, and emails to ask about past beliefs. Ono didn’t directly answer many of the questions, at one point saying, “My name is on a lot of things at institutions that I didn’t write.”
He also stated that some controversial decisions were made by committees, task forces, and other groups. For example, Governor Alan Levine pressed him repeatedly on antisemitism, including asking why Ono didn’t condemn the October 7 attacks on Israelis at a gathering two days later. Ono responded that he had sent a campuswide communication decrying the attack and didn’t feel the need to say the same thing again. He also said he was very proud of a center founded to study related issues.
Levine then read from emails obtained by The Chronicle in which Michigan board member Mark Bernstein and others pressed Ono on why the word “antisemitism” had been left out of the center’s name. Ono said, “I had no reluctance personally. The hesitancy was not mine.”
Not everyone on Florida’s board was happy with the way the board seemed to turn against Ono. “We have never used this forum to interrogate,” said Governor Charles H. Lydecker. “Are we a court of law here or are we a body intending on ratifying the vote already taken at the University of Florida? This process doesn’t feel fair to me.”
Others said they were just doing their job. “There is an absolute need to know what this gentleman believes,” Governor Jose Oliva said. “I don’t understand where it becomes unfair.”
After a few more minutes of heated debate, Governor Paul Renner pressed Ono why his name was on a letter signed by hundreds of college presidents decrying the Trump administration’s targeting of higher education. Ono acknowledged he had signed it and then removed his name. Renner asked if that happened only because Ono was vying for the new job. He replied: “I was really struggling with whether to sign it and then after I was announced, I wanted to be in line with the laws of Florida, so I removed my name.”
Board members said they looked for occasions in which Ono had talked about his changing views publicly, before he sought to move to Florida. Renner even asked Ono for examples. “I didn’t anticipate this question, so I’ll have to get back to you,” Ono replied.
Ono’s supporters on the board and elsewhere spoke in glowing terms about his academic qualifications, and framed his change in beliefs as an example of growth.
“Ono is far from the first leader to evolve in this thinking,” said Mori Hosseini, chair of the University of Florida Board of Trustees, at the beginning of the meeting. Hosseini went on to cite Ronald Reagan, once a Democrat, and Clarence Thomas, who “was a student of Malcolm X before becoming a staunch conservative voice on the Supreme Court.”
He added: “Don’t yield to outsiders who post out-of-context sound bites on social media.”
Ono’s supporters also tried to portray some of Ono’s critics as wanting the job for themselves. Governor Eric Silagy asked Hosseini if any current members of the Board of Governors have expressed interest in the job. Hosseini said Renner, who started on the board in April, had. Renner then jumped in to say he was asked to express an interest in the job and had one conversation with Hosseini about it, but nothing came of it. Renner added now that he was on the board, he would not serve as president. Silagy then asked Renner: “Are you going to recuse yourself” from the vote? “Why would I?” Renner responded.
As the board members voted, it became clear quickly that Ono’s appointment would fail. When all had voted, board chairman Brian Lamb seemed shocked: “OK, alright, the motion fails. First time that’s really happened.”
A university spokeswoman said the university had no comment on the vote. It’s unclear what will happen next in the search for a new president. Ono has already resigned from Michigan and is left without a job.
