The Florida Board of Governors voted against Santa Ono’s candidacy for president of the University of Florida, the state’s flagship research institution.
The former University of Michigan president stepped down from his role in Ann Arbor after he was named the sole finalist for the position at the University of Florida. Ono was then unanimously selected by the school’s board.
However, a 10-6 vote by the state board rejected Ono’s selection due to his previous work supporting DEI initiatives, views on climate change and perceived lenient punishment of pro-Palestinian campus protesters.
It was the first time in the board’s history that it rejected a presidential selection from the University of Florida.
Ono had changed his tune on DEI in his last few months at Michigan. He closed all of its central DEI offices and wrote an op-ed in which he described how the initiative, “became something else—more about ideology, division and bureaucracy, not student success.”
But members of the Florida Board of Governors were skeptical of his recent pivot away from “an entire ideological architecture,” Detroit News reports.
“There’s too much smoke with Santa Ono,” Republican state rep. Jimmy Patronis wrote on X. “We need a leader, not a DEI acolyte. Leave the Ann Arbor thinking in Ann Arbor.”
Leadership at the University of Florida, spearheaded by board chair Mori Hosseini, pursued Ono in the belief that he could lead it back into the top-five ranking of best public universities in the nation.
The school’s previous president, Ben Sasse, was a former Republican U.S. senator who stepped down following a one-year stint. He was later criticized for his unusually high spending habits.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has led the push to reshape the state’s education to champion conservative values, primarily by targeting school initiatives focused on DEI and gender ideology. His strategy led to the takeover of a once-liberal college and has served as a blueprint for Donald Trump’s agenda for education at the federal level.
Deemed too liberal for the University of Florida, Ono also faced sharp criticism from community members at the University of Michigan for closing its DEI offices and cracking down on protesters, mLive reports.
