Illustration by Tabi Walters
On May 3, then-U-M president Santa Ono beamed as he sat on stage at Michigan Stadium for commencement ceremonies. Next to him was honorary doctorate recipient Derek Jeter, who gave up a Michigan baseball scholarship to play for the New York Yankees, but has remained a true-blue Wolverine.
Unbeknownst to Jeter or the audience of parents and graduates, Ono was about to change colors.
The next day, he dropped a bombshell: he was resigning from U-M and planned to accept the president’s job at University of Florida, where trustees voted unanimously to hire him for compensation valued at $3 million a year.
In an op-ed for Inside Higher Ed, Ono lavished praise on his presumed new employer, saying its vision was “ambitious, anchored in a culture of excellence, and laser-focused on student success.”
A month later, the laser was turned on Ono. The state’s board of governors, which oversees Florida’s public universities, grilled Ono over his past support for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in academia. He had repudiated that history, writing that DEI creates “ideology, division and bureaucracy, not student success.” But right-wing blogger Chris Rufo started an anti-DEI firestorm that was fanned by Donald Trump Jr. and three Republican members of Congress from Florida. On a split vote, the board rejected the appointment.
Trump Jr. vividly expressed his opposition in a May 28 post on X: “WTF! Have the decision makers at @UF lost their minds!??? This woke psycho might be a perfect fit for a Communist school in California, but how is he even being considered for this role in Florida?”
As it turned out, Ono lost more than the president’s position. Buried deep in his employment agreement, posted on a UF blog, was a tenured professorship in the ophthalmology department at the College of Medicine. When Ono’s appointment was rejected, that vanished as well. And, upon resigning from U-M, he gave up a deal that was extended last December until 2032, leaving him jobless.
Beyond forfeiting perks, the damage to Ono’s public profile is incalculable. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jack Stripling and David Jesse declared, “He wanted a presidency. He became a pariah.”
Perhaps the ultimate irony of what the avid sports fan gave up came in a photo posted on Threads by Jalen Rose, a member of U-M’s legendary “Fab Five” basketball team. “Honored to receive the University of Michigan President’s Medal of Excellence,” he wrote. Standing next to him was not Ono, but U-M’s interim president, Domenico Grasso.