Will UF pick next president based on politics, not academic credentials?

ORLANDO, Fla. — The rejection of Santa Ono as the University of Florida’s next president confronts the state’s flagship university with a conundrum as it picks a new leader: Must it consider a president based on political ideology rather than academic qualifications?

“I don’t think that any credible, talented administrator will take a job at Florida under those circumstances, because it’s a career-ender,” said Silke-Maria Weineck, a professor at the University of Michigan where Ono was president until he stepped down after UF tapped him for the role.

On Tuesday, Florida’s Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s colleges and universities, voted 10-6 against Ono’s confirmation as UF’s 14th president — a shocking rejection of someone unanimously approved by UF’s board of trustees. It was the first time the board, whose vote was previously considered largely procedural, went against a university’s presidential selection.

Members of the board grilled Ono, who stepped down as president of Michigan to take the UF post, on his past positions on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and his handling of campus protests over the war in Gaza. Those who voted against him made it clear his views — though he claimed they’d shifted — did not fit with their conservative beliefs nor Florida’s conservative education policies.

Now, UF heads back to the drawing board for its president search, a first since the state established the Board of Governors in 2003.

The university has yet to provide information on how it will proceed.

After Tuesday’s meeting, university leaders and Ono declined to answer reporters’ questions, quickly exiting the room at the University of Central Florida’s downtown Orlando campus.

On Thursday, UF trustee chair Mori Hosseini — who sat next to Ono during his hours-long questioning on Tuesday — called the vote “deeply disappointing” but also offered no specifics on what comes next.

“Our board of trustees stands by the integrity of the search, the strength of the candidates it produced and the principles that guided our work,” said Hosseini, at a UF board of trustees meeting in Gainesville. “This outcome is deeply disappointing to our board of trustees.”

Ono is a respected molecular immunologist who also served as president at University of British Columbia and University of Cincinnati.

UF Student Body President Blake Cox spoke in support of Ono before the board voted him down, saying he would help improve UF’s status among the best universities in the country. UF is ranked seventh nationally among public universities while Michigan, where Ono was previously president, is ranked third.

“The UF degree will be on the walls of over 10,000 new people every year, myself included, and with an accomplished leader like Dr. Ono, these degrees will become even more valuable as UF ascends to top five and beyond,” Cox said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed the majority of members on both UF’s board of trustees, which unanimously voted to hire Ono, and the board of governors, which rejected him. DeSantis also signed a law outlawing DEI initiatives and other policies he derisively called “woke” at state colleges and universities.

He did not weigh in ahead of the vote and after it his office said only that DeSantis appointed conservative members to the board of governors and had confidence in their abilities.

UF’s interim president Kent Fuchs could continue in his role overseeing the 60,000-student university until it finds another candidate. Fuchs’ contract says if a permanent president is not picked by the end of July, then UF and Fuchs will negotiate an extension.

Before being asked to step in as interim president last year, Fuchs was UF’s president from 2015 to 2023, predating DeSantis and his slew of higher-education appointees. Fuchs was a provost at Cornell University, and was appointed by former President Barack Obama to serve on the National Science Board.

But some professors fear university presidents like Fuchs are going out of style in Florida.

“The path for the next UF presidential candidate is extremely narrow — they would have to make a pretense of ‘viewpoint diversity’ while also genuflecting at a narrow ideological viewpoint altar,” Meera Sitharam, a UF professor and the president of its faculty union, said in an emailed statement.

Ono seemed to backtrack on his record at Michigan during the board’s questioning, but many on social media noted that flip-flopping on key issues wasn’t likely to win over people on either side of culture-war debates.

“If you’re willing to sell your soul to try and appease them, then I’m sorry but you deserve whatever they do to you,” wrote Neil Lewis Jr, a professor and administrator at Cornell who earned his doctorate at Michigan, in a post about Ono on Bluesky.

Weineck, the Michigan professor, said Florida will likely end up hiring “some lackey” to be UF’s next president instead of someone like Ono.

In the last several years, the trend in Florida’s universities has been to hire former legislators or DeSantis allies as president.

Former Lieutenant Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, former state lawmaker Manny Diaz Jr. and former Speaker of the Florida House Richard Corcoran all were tapped, some as recently as in the past month, to be presidents at Florida universities.

University presidents need to be autonomous from state politics, Weineck said, and the constant interference from Tallahassee will deter them.

“People who cherish their own intellectual, political, ideological independence would not consider going to a place where that independence is more or less outlawed now,” she said.

But Florida conservatives, such as Sen. Rick Scott and Rep. Byron Donalds, celebrated Ono’s downfall.

Scott called the board’s vote the “right decision” on social media.

“UF’s students, faculty, and staff deserve a president who will stand for Florida values and against antisemitism,” Scott wrote on X.

Donalds, R-Naples, also said on X that the board made the right decision, and he thanked Christopher Rufo for “exposing” Ono’s “far-left record & alerting the public.”

Rufo led the effort in Florida and nationally to end DEI at universities and is now a DeSantis-appointed trustee at New College of Florida in Sarasota, which the state is trying to remake into a conservative, classical liberal arts college.

He did not respond to a request for comment but has been among the most vocal conservative voices against Ono on social media. He called Ono’s nomination a “colossal mistake” by UF.

“There needs to be a new process that brings in conservative leaders,” he wrote on X.