Truckling to MAGA ended in humiliation for Santa Ono
Century Tower on the Gainesville campus of the University of Florida. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
A few days ago, the University of Florida was all ready to welcome a brand-new president. They'd gotten rid of the useless (yet expensive) Ben Sasse and chosen a single finalist, a scientist called Santa Ono, former head of the University of Michigan.
The trustees liked him; Ron DeSantis liked him, especially since Ono, who was once all-in on diversity at UM, recently pulled a 180, loudly recanting his climate change-admitting, student protest-allowing progressive ways and parroting the governor's War on Woke nonsense like a DeSantis Bot.
It wasn't enough: The state university Board of Governors refused to give him the job.
Poor old weathervane Ono fell victim to a nasty social media campaign against him, led by such intellectual giants as Don Trump Jr., who squawked 'WTF!' on the twixter; New College trustee Christopher 'They're eating the cats!' Rufo; Sen. Rick Scott; and the congenitally absurd Rep. Byron Donalds, who allowed as how while he didn't know Ono, the man didn't sound like he 'comported with the values of the state of Florida.'
Au contraire, congressman. Given that Ono was prepared to abandon the principles of free speech, inclusion, and academic independence, I'd say he perfectly comports with the values of the state of Florida.
Especially when it comes to higher education.
DeSantis and his UF allies may have lost the Ono battle (more on the politics involved later), but he's committed to the larger war: Florida may soon be celebrated in the MAGA-sphere as the first state to lay waste to its universities.
The full-scale assault started in 2023, when DeSantis wrecked New College and took to installing ideologically aligned hacks as presidents and appointing university boards so bent on destruction they'd shame a Visigoth.
Former politico Richard Corcoran was not educationally, temperamentally, or administratively qualified to be president of the state honors college, yet there he is, DeSantis' boy, drawing a huge salary and inviting accused rapists to speak on campus in Sarasota.
FIU and FAU got landed with dead-enders former Lt. Gov. Jeannette Nuñez and Republican state Rep.-turned private prison company vice president Adam Hasner.
Now the governor has turned his lizardy eye upon the universities of West Florida and Florida A&M with a view to undermining academic freedom, student opportunity, and scholarly rigor.
DeSantis, who loves to call Florida 'free,' doesn't want institutions of higher education to be free: He wants them cowed, cramped, and compliant.
In April, DeSantis claimed — with no evidence, mind — UWF was some kind of 'indoctrination camp' run by 'Marxist professors' and warned those crazy Pensacola lefties to 'buckle up.' Big changes were coming.
To that end, he appointed a noisome bouquet of trustees, several proudly hostile to book-learning. Three of them were either rejected by the Florida Senate or else slunk off before they could be officially sent packing.
Adam Kissel, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and one of the discarded candidates, seemed puzzled by the snub. In an interview with UWF's newspaper 'The Voyager,' he claimed he'd been brought down by a 'disinformation narrative' partially based on his comments lamenting the GI Bill's negative effect on American society.
That would be the GI Bill that has enabled millions of veterans to get a college degree and join the middle class.
Kissel also complained about the general milieu in blood red Escambia County, claiming, 'Cancel culture is still alive in Pensacola.'
After these embarrassing rebuffs, you might think DeSantis might rethink his approach but, of course, you'd be wrong. His newest trustee pick, another Heritage Foundation luminary, pitched a hissy fit about UWF students putting on a Halloween drag show in 2019.
(Halloween — you know, when people dress up in all sorts of outlandish ways?)
Zack Smith, a Pensacola native and former assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Florida, told UWF's then-president Martha Saunders he had 'concerns' (most of which seem to involve gay people asserting equal rights or Black people calling out systemic racism in America), including such outré actions as inviting one of the founders of Black Lives Matter to speak on campus (she's an 'avowed Marxist'!) as well as the UWF librarian suggesting Ibram X. Kendi's 'How to Be an Antiracist' as a good read for Black History Month.
God forbid students might encounter a critique of capitalism or an important and provocative exploration of race during Black History Month.
Pro tips for Project 2025 zealots:
Capitalism is not beyond criticism. I refer Heritage True Believers to Mark 10:25 (the camel/rich man/eye-of-needle thing) and Matthew 6:24 (the God and Mammon thing) as well as analyses of our economic system, many written by those embedded in it.
Marxism is a political philosophy. Like any other philosophy, it should be studied in universities. Merely hearing about it does not rot your very soul.
Ibram X. Kendi is a distinguished scholar, a graduate of Florida A&M University who has gone on to win a National Book Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. Reading his work will not infect you with the Woke Mind Virus.
But — agree or disagree with what Kendi says — his book might make you think.
Imagine that: college students thinking.
Eye-wateringly stupid as Smith's complaints were, they had the intended effect: Martha Saunders resigned, allowing DeSantis to put his education commissioner in as interim president.
The irredeemably unimpressive Manny Diaz Jr. has no higher ed experience, no terminal degree, and no business running what was, under presidents such as Judy Bense, a highly regarded archeologist, and Martha Saunders, an expert in communications theory, a university on its way up.
Unfortunately for UWF, odds are Diaz gets the permanent gig: That's what happened at New College; that's what happened at FIU.
DeSantis wants university presidents who realize they do not work for the institution, fostering knowledge, encouraging free inquiry, and serving education.
He insists they work for him. They must do his bidding, battling villains such as faculty unions, student journalists, Pride Month celebrations, critical race theory, gender studies, and African American studies.
Which brings us to FAMU.
DeSantis and his higher ed henchpersons have, in the past, tread pretty carefully with Florida's only public HCBU.
Maybe it's because FAMU is such a, well, let's call it a 'bargain.'
In 2024-25, FAMU's enrollment was 9,980. New College's was 850. FAMU's appropriation was $50 million. New College got $52 million.
Even those of us who went to school in Florida can do that math.
Not that anyone should be surprised the state spends far more per student at predominantly white New College than at predominantly not-white FAMU.
Can't be racism. Oh, no. Perish the thought.
Even though on Planet DeSantis, the very existence of a majority-minority student body is DEI gone wild.
At any rate, FAMU's no longer flying under the governor's radar. He just got to stick another of his favorites in the top job.
The good part: FAMU's presidential search was unusually transparent, at least in comparison to the absurdly hermetic process at UF and other state institutions. The four finalists' names were publicly announced and students, faculty, and community members were invited to meet them.
Three had solid-to-excellent qualifications. Contenders included the provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, the senior vice president for administration and finance at the University of Central Florida, and FAMU's own senior vice president and COO.
The not-so-good part: Candidate Number Four.
Marva Johnson appeared almost out of nowhere, rumored to be a late addition pushed by trustee Deveron Gibbons, a DeSantis appointee.
As you'd expect, she has no higher education experience, but she has far more important qualities: She's a telecom company executive, a MAGA Republican, and a crony of Ron DeSantis'.
FAMU has long been a leader in the fight for civil rights and remains the nation's top public HCBU, alma mater of politicians like former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and U.S. Rep. Al Green, musicians Common and Cannonball Adderley, satirist Roy Wood Jr., Wimbledon champion Althea Gibson, and art collector Bernard Kinsey.
Rattlers were horrified Johnson made the short list and held rallies protesting her candidacy. Movie producer, FAMU alum and big-time donor Will Packer said she might 'do irreparable harm to the university's relationship with its community and with its donor base.'
Naturally, she got the job.
And, like any self-respecting MAGA grifter, immediately demanded a salary of $750,000, nearly $300,000 a year higher than her predecessor.
Of course, she won't make as much as the president of New College: He pulls in nearly a $1 million overseeing those 850 students.
Taxpayers might wonder why, when legislators and the governor keep whining about the need to cut budgets and save money, there seems to be no problem paying a gaggle of under-qualified nonentities huge amounts to be university presidents.
But universities in Florida and other MAGA-controlled states are no longer so much about education as they are about propaganda and power.
Republicans want to control curriculum, censoring anything that upsets white folks — topics such as slavery, genocide, colonialism, gender, women's rights.
You've seen how Trump is going after Harvard and other universities, cutting off funding, trying to control hiring and admissions, denying foreign students visas.
Colleges in Utah, Ohio, Texas, Iowa, and (no surprise) Florida are being told to emphasize Western Civilization, the Constitution, and 'Great Books.'
MAGAs might not like it if universities really focused on, say, the Constitution. Students might realize that the current regime regularly violates it.
For Ron DeSantis, taming Florida's universities feeds his desperate need for relevance. Spurned by the voters during his disastrous presidential bid, ridiculed by onetime patron Donald Trump, defied by the Legislature, DeSantis figures at least he can run — or ruin — education.
It's not quite as smooth a conquest as anticipated.
The crash of Santa Ono's UF candidacy was about the Right's fear of DEI. But it was also about giving DeSantis a black eye.
The crash of Santa Ono's UF candidacy was about the Right's fear of DEI — they truly do want to Make America White (and Christian and male-dominated) Again — and hysteria over hiring someone who, despite his pathetic attempts to demonstrate that he'd drunk the Trumpy Kool-Aid, clearly knew better.
But it was also about giving DeSantis a black eye.
Signs indicate Casey DeSantis will run for governor when her husband terms out.
But she's got all kinds of political problems, not least an investigation into her dodgy charity, Hope Florida.
Her husband is spewing spittle all over Tallahassee, accusing a 'jackass' in the Legislature (the rest of us know him as Rep. Alex Andrade) of taking documents which 'he dropped in a prosecutor's office,' and hollering 'that is not an organic investigation' and any accusation of money laundering is just a 'smear.'
Then there's her likely primary opponent, Rep. Byron Donalds. He's been endorsed by Trump.
It's no coincidence he led the MAGA campaign against Ono.
Higher education has always been political. Governors and legislators have never approved of professors (liberals, mostly) or students (snotty-nosed kids protesting) or faculty (probably Marxists).
But DeSantis has taken the politicization of universities to a whole new level of venality, pettiness, and dangerous repression.
The 'Free State of Florida' isn't.
As that famous novel (which could soon be on the banned books list) says: 'Freedom is slavery' and 'Ignorance is strength.'
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