We Just Witnessed One of the Greatest Face-Plants of the Trump Era. Savor It.

Yahoo

2 days ago

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Santa Ono's career blew up on Tuesday, and so did the illusion that the presidents of the most powerful universities in the country can preserve themselves by pandering to Donald Trump.
Ono was president of the University of Michigan from 2022 until last month, when he resigned to pursue the same job at the University of Florida. Ono may have felt he had a clear path to the post; Florida's board of trustees backed him unanimously. The president of one of the world's great schools, Ono was, on paper, a great get for Florida, which was still trying to get its house in order. Its last president, former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, made a financial mess of the place and was pushed out.
Consistent with his mission to make Florida the kind of place where 'woke goes to die,' Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies had been steadily building up power in Florida's higher-education system. The state's public universities, not just UF in Gainesville, were turning over their presidents at a rapid rate. DeSantis effectively controls the state university system's 'board of governors,' which this past winter gave itself the power to approve the picks by the campus-level board of trustees.
It was for this conservative audience that Ono had spent weeks, if not longer, trying to establish himself as a good soldier in the culture war against higher education. And it was this same audience that, on Tuesday, denied Ono his next job. Ono had previously supported diversity initiatives at Michigan, a campus with a liberal reputation compared to other heavyweights in the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference. Though Ono had gone to pains to distance himself from his own record on that issue, Republican politicians from around the state pounced on it anyway. Donald Trump Jr. asked whether Florida's bosses had 'lost their minds.' Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds called for a new search.
And so when the vote came around, DeSantis' board rejected Ono. UF 'sets the benchmark for education nationwide,' one MAGA congressman claimed. 'There's too much smoke with Santa Ono. We need a leader, not a DEI acolyte. Leave the Ann Arbor thinking in Ann Arbor.'
Ono will no longer be a top educator at the biggest, most beloved schools we have. But if his former colleagues are paying attention, he has at least offered them one parting educational gift. Ono is proof that there is no length the leadership of the country's crown-jewel universities can go to that will convince right-wing assailants to give them a soft landing. Ono played a stupid game and won a stupid prize.
In another world, Ono could have been a hero at Michigan. His first full year leading UM was 2023, and he made himself a popular man in the most high-profile circumstances possible: That year, Michigan's football team was en route to what would become an undefeated, national championship-winning season. In the middle of the campaign, it came to light that a Michigan staffer had run a sprawling cheating operation to electronically steal opponents' signals. (Or, as it's understood in Ann Arbor, one rogue staffer may have broken an archaic rule that a bunch of jealous losers decided to cry about.) The Big Ten suspended coach Jim Harbaugh for three crucial games as the whole school rallied around him.
With a bright light on him, Ono mastered the retail politics of the situation. He showed up for a defiant photo op with Harbaugh and raised a legal ruckus, trying to get the Big Ten's suspension stopped in court. (Michigan eventually gave up the fight.) Ono was suddenly the most famous administrator anywhere, a man who fought for Wolverine football with the rightful fervor of a crusader.
Ono did not have an easy time with the other parts of being the president of such a huge, influential school. Even before the sign-stealing scandal, Ono led the school into a contentious standoff with striking graduate student instructors. At one point during the strike, picketers showed up outside Ono's house, and university police arrested two of them in an ugly episode.
The parties reached a collective bargaining agreement, but Ono never quite stopped being at war with his own students. The campus was the site of intense protesting (and a pro-Palestinian encampment) after Oct. 7, 2023. Being the president of the University of Michigan during Israel's destruction of Gaza may well be an impossible job, given the school's (and the state's) massive constituencies on each side of Israel versus Palestine. But Ono sure did seem to make a big mess of the situation. At one point, he stepped in to disallow student government voting on a pair of competing resolutions on the war. Ono's administration later had police raid a pro-Palestine encampment, claiming that open flames and overstressed power sources had made it a threat to public safety. Ono continually rejected protester demands that the school untangle any Israeli ties in its endowment, which the school took pains to argue were small.
The ground was seeded for Ono to make a much sharper turn against any sort of left-of-center politics on his campus. After Donald Trump took office for a second time, Ono quickly got to work taking apart diversity infrastructure at Michigan before the administration had even made specific demands of him to do that. He craved credit for his turn against DEI, and it became clear soon enough why: Ono was preparing his exit, and he was eyeing the flagship public school under DeSantis' control in Florida.
Ono cast himself as a guy who supported the 'original intent' of DEI but believed that it 'became something else—more about ideology, division and bureaucracy, not student success.' Auditioning for the Florida job, Ono played to his next suitor by praising the 'alignment' between the highest level of Florida government and the university administration. It showed 'seriousness of purpose,' he said.
I can't say how much Ono believes any of that. But then I can't say how much Ono believes anything he says. By the end, his reputation at Michigan was that he'd say anything to anybody to weasel away from the tension right in front of him. A Michigan regent, shortly after Ono's rejection by Florida, tweeted an old quote that he attributed to Fran Lebowitz : 'He doesn't believe in anything—just auditions for approval in whatever room he's in.' It seems that a bunch of Florida Republicans had the same view.
Because Ono has no clear ideology other than careerism, we can't know for sure whether he put principle aside to get the Florida job. But Ono's flameout from the top tier of higher education carries a few lessons with it. One is that running a university in Florida, and perhaps any red state, is now an even more politically fraught job than it already was—and it was already really hard to be a college president anywhere. The qualification of having run a school like Michigan is now less important than having not previously lent support to efforts to enroll more nonwhite students on college campuses.
Ono's failure should say something else to administrators who might seek to advance their careers—or, less cynically, just try to protect their own campuses—by playing along with federal bullying of universities. Ono had a long, distinguished resume. It didn't help him, because the people who denied him this latest dream job aren't running universities to teach. They're running them to make a point. By debasing himself at their feet, Ono helped them do exactly that.