ORLANDO — Florida’s highest university board voted Tuesday to block the University of Florida from selecting Santa Ono as its next president.
It is the first time in the Board of Governors’ 20-year history that members have overturned a university’s presidential selection.
The 10-6 vote, with one member absent, came after a monthlong campaign by conservative politicians and activists who opposed Ono’s prior stances on diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Michigan, and his handling of pro-Palestine protests in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Ono and UF Board of Trustees chairperson Mori Hosseini quickly left the meeting through a side door, escorted by police. When approached by reporters, Hosseini declined to take questions. Ono didn’t look back.
The downvote sends UF back to the drawing board on picking a qualified leader — which will be much more difficult now, said Amanda Phalin, a former faculty representative on the board.
“It’s an absolute embarrassment,” Phalin said. “The political questions that were being asked portends more politics in the process and less focus on academics.”
In a letter sent to board members Monday, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott accused Ono of “failing to uphold the most basic standards of leadership” by allowing an encampment set up by student protestors to stand for nearly a month while president at Michigan.
Scott was the latest to voice his opposition, joining former Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who’s now in Congress; Donald Trump Jr.; and U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a candidate in next year’s governor’s race.
More than a dozen members of the public — including UF trustee Rahul Patel, who led the search — spoke during the meeting, many on Ono’s record combating antisemitism at Michigan.
Board member Alan Levine focused on Ono’s delayed response to removing pro-Palestine protestors from Michigan’s campus, allowing an encampment for nearly a month.
Ono said the school took a measured approach to the encampment to avoid the kind of violence that occurred at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner during the meeting presented Ono with a binder filled with news clippings and prior public statements — many of which he posted on social media — and grilled Ono on the timeline of his evolving opinions on diversity and inclusion initiatives, pointing to comments that appeared to support those programs long after the school disbanded them.
Ono faltered on several questions, arguing that he had not received the materials in advance and could not recall some key details.
Ono made pains to walk back some prior statements, saying that his views have evolved and he now believes Florida’s policies prohibiting diversity initiatives is the correct path.
Board member Eric Silagy pointed to a 2010 regulation passed by the board that required programs to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, also known as DEI. For more than a decade, Florida required universities to create reports on the progress toward those goals until the regulation was struck down in 2023.
“Michigan put DEI in place in 2016. Well, Florida actually put it in in 2010,” Silagy said. Since then, “clearly Florida has evolved.”
“This evolution is happening across the whole continent,” Ono responded.
Board member Charles Lydecker said that no candidate for a university president’s job had ever been interrogated in such a manner.
“This process does not feel fair to me,” he said.
At one point in the meeting, Silagy asked Hosseini whether any sitting board of governors members had expressed interest in the president’s role.
Hosseini said Renner had approached him prior to Ono’s selection, causing a momentary uproar. Renner responded that he had been asked by a UF trustee to speak with Hosseini and that the conversation occurred before he was appointed to the board of governors. He further promised that if there is a vacancy for the president’s role, he would not seek it.
Supporters have framed Ono as a well-respected researcher and academic leader who is best positioned to keep pushing UF’s rising national prominence.
UF trustee Fred Ridley noted the trustees unanimously elected Ono as president, praising his kindness and thoughtfulness.
“I would just ask you to look past all the noise, listen to him today, and do what’s right for the University of Florida,” he said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had generally stayed out of the debate, had told board members to “vote their conscience,” according to board member Ashley Bell Barnett.
In a statement, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a UF alumnus, said the vote “begs the question: what top tier academic leader will subject themselves to the far-right fanatics running Tallahassee? UF is vying to be the nation’s top public research university. Installing right-wing, unqualified partisans at the helm will only delay or derail that ascent.”
Times staff writer Divya Kumar contributed to this report.