The Florida Board of Governors rejected Santa Ono to serve as the president of the University of Florida (UF) on Tuesday amid backlash from conservatives over Ono’s past stances on diversity, equity, and inclusion on (DEI) college campuses.
The board, which oversees the state’s university system, voted 10-6 to block the former University of Michigan president from serving as the UF president weeks after the university’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously in favor of Ono.
The move from the state’s board of governors marks the first time in its 22-year history that it has rejected a university’s presidential selection.
The board’s rejection means that UF will have to start its presidential selection process over.
Ono faced pushback from conservatives, as well as members of Florida’s congressional delegation, over his past stances on DEI, which has become a target of the Trump administration. Last week, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. called on “every single member” of the board of governors to vote against Ono.
However, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who appointed most of the state’s board of governors, avoided jumping directly into the fray over Ono’s nomination.
“We have expectations about what we want in higher education. We won’t want it to be a fountain of activism and leftist indoctrination and if you go in that direction, then you will not have support to continue,” DeSantis said at a press conference last week. “People have pointed out a lot of statements that he has made that are not exactly what we’re looking for in a state where woke goes to die and I cringe at some of these statements.”
The chair of UF’s board of trustees, Mori Hosseini, who is a DeSantis ally, has backed Ono as the pick to lead the university.
Ono wrote in a recent op-ed that his views on the issue have evolved.
“Like many, I supported what I believed to be the original intent of DEI ensuring equal opportunity and fairness for every student,” he wrote in Inside Higher Ed earlier this month. “That’s something on which most everyone agrees. But over time, I saw how DEI became something else—more about ideology, division and bureaucracy, not student success.”
