The Florida Board of Governors (BOG) barely rejected the University of Florida’s (UF) presidential candidate with a 10-6 vote during Tuesday’s meeting. UF’s Board of Trustees (BOT) had voted unanimously for Santa Ono, who was the only candidate they pitched to the BOG. Yet if just three BOG members switched their vote, the state where “woke goes to die” would’ve hired its own woke university leader.
In 2023, Ono listed a “Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) 2.0” as one of his presidential priorities at the University of Michigan. He also promoted an “Inclusive History Project” that strives to make “‘reparations’ based on race ‘in areas such as admissions, financial aid, and faculty and staff hiring, promotion, and compensation,’” The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann reported.
The “woke psycho,” as Donald Trump Jr. titled him in a May 28 post on X, most recently served as the president of University of Michigan (UM) from 2022 to May of this year. He had previously served as president of the University of Cincinnati (2012-2016) and president of the University of British Columbia (2016-2022).
Despite Ono’s DEI initiatives, his speech during the BOT confirmation meeting seemed to paint a different picture.
“I support fully the decision to end DEI,” Ono said, according to Fox News. “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.”
Many of UF’s trustee members also felt convinced of his change in dedication to identity politics, according to their comments in the presidential search packet.
Meanwhile, while Ono was going through the hiring process, he “signed an April 2025 letter with 665 other college presidents objecting to President Trump’s efforts to erase identity politics bigotry on U.S. campuses. The letter calls the equal application of federal antidiscrimination law ‘unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.’ After his candidacy for UF president became public, however, Ono’s name was removed from the letter,” Pullman reported.
The potential next president for the country’s No. 7 public university was narrowly denied the position, and that should be a concern in light of Florida’s high academic standing and the considerable efforts Gov. Ron DeSantis and others have made to guide the state’s education system away from leftist policies.
The Sunshine State ranks No. 1 in higher education for the ninth year in a row and has inspired other states like Utah, Texas, and Oklahoma to adopt “Florida’s education reforms as a model for their own.” In 2022, UF was ranked as a top-five public university for the first time in its history. When Ben Sasse became president in 2023, he “scrapped the university’s DEI office and contracts, halted pro-terrorist student encampments, and worked to forbid political indoctrination in classrooms,” Pullman reported.
With just three votes swinging the other direction, all that work could have been undone.
The process for a new candidate will now start over, with the Presidential Search Committee finding another candidate to recommend to the BOT. Despite the narrow escape from the appointment of Ono, DeSantis is confident in the BOG’s ability to choose a candidate.
“As stated previously by this office, the Governor appointed people to the Board of Governors who are conservative and aligned to use their judgment, and he had confidence in their ability to be able to discharge this responsibility,” a DeSantis administration official told The Federalist.
UF’s BOT did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Abigail Nichols is a correspondent for The Federalist. She was previously the opinion editor for the University of South Florida’s student newspaper, The Oracle. She is now working as the business manager at the University of North Florida’s student-run media outlet, Spinnaker Media, while obtaining a Master’s Degree in Social work.
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