Florida officials on Tuesday rejected the candidacy of Santa Ono to lead the University of Florida, after he had been accused of leniency toward pro-Palestinian protesters while serving as president of the University of Michigan.
The University of Florida’s board unanimously approved Dr. Ono last week, but the state’s Board of Governors, which oversees the sprawling State University System of Florida, voted against him, 10 to 6.
At Michigan, Dr. Ono had presided over a campus that was rife with acrimonious debates over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the role of diversity in higher education. Those issues have been hotly debated in Florida, where Republican leaders have successfully enacted conservative priorities across K-12 schools and in college.
Dr. Ono had tried to distance himself from the politics of Michigan as he sought to transition to the Sunshine State. Last month, he wrote an opinion essay disavowing diversity programs, for instance.
Paul Renner, a member of the Board of Governors who voted against Mr. Ono’s confirmation, said in an interview on Tuesday that Mr. Ono had led a university that embraced diversity, equity and inclusion programming. Mr. Renner said he did not find Mr. Ono’s attempt to distance himself from those efforts sincere.
“The public record completely contradicted what the nominee was telling us,” said Mr. Renner, a former speaker of the Florida House.
Republicans celebrated the unexpected move. Mr. Ono had already given notice that he would be leaving his job in Michigan.
A Michigan spokeswoman did not immediately return a message. But a member of the school’s Board of Regents, Jordan Acker, suggested that Mr. Ono could not get his old job back. “Santa Ono tendered his resignation and we accepted it,” Mr. Acker said in a brief interview.
Rebekah Modrak, a recent chair of Michigan’s Faculty Senate, called the assertion that Mr. Ono was soft on pro-Palestinian activism “absolutely untrue.” She criticized his decision to close the university’s D.E.I. office, which had been known as a national leader in such programming.
“He’s a man who witnessed racial bias but closed the office of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Dr. Modrak said in an email, adding, “There’s a strong sense of justice in the fact that Santa Ono is now out of a job.”
In Florida, the opposition to Dr. Ono was flipped. In recent weeks he had been criticized by some conservatives in the state over his past stances on diversity programming.
“There’s too much smoke with Santa Ono,” Representative Jimmy Patronis, a Florida Republican, wrote on social media on Monday. “We need a leader, not a DEI acolyte. Leave the Ann Arbor thinking in Ann Arbor.”
Dr. Ono had supporters in Florida. The chair of the university’s board of trustees, Mori Hosseini, who has aimed to move the university in Gainesville, Fla., up in rankings, had supported Dr. Ono.
“He is the right person to accelerate U.F.’s upward trajectory,” Mr. Hosseini said in a message to the Florida community last week. He could not be immediately reached for comment.
Dr. Ono would have replaced Ben Sasse, a former Nebraska senator who abruptly resigned last summer.
Dr. Ono was born to Japanese immigrant parents in Vancouver, British Columbia, and grew up in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Before leading the University of Michigan, he served as president of the University of British Columbia and the University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Ono could not be immediately reached for comment. The University of Florida declined to comment.
Vimal Patel writes about higher education with a focus on speech and campus culture.
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