Trustees of Florida’s flagship public university vote today on whether to reverse their institution’s nascent success by selecting an identity-politics booster to replace former University of Florida President Ben Sasse.

Sasse’s UF presidency was key to the Florida legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts at reforming higher education away from leftist indoctrination and towards an academics-focused core curriculum. States including Utah, Texas, and Oklahoma have used Florida’s education reforms as a model for their own.

Yet UF trustees will vote Tuesday on a candidate to replace Sasse likely to undo all he and state lawmakers have accomplished to increase the university’s profile, improve its stewardship of public resources, lead the nation in education reform, and remove identity politics corruption. Although the university search committee promised it would “recommend a small number of highly qualified candidates to the UF Board of Trustees,” it ultimately only recommended one finalist, Santa Ono, whose professional record teems with identity politics activism.

On Saturday, journalist Chris Rufo posted a supercut of Ono’s public pledges of allegiance to race and sex discrimination throughout his career.

The Canadian-born Ono was president of the University of Cincinnati from 2012 to 2016, president of the University of British Columbia from 2016 to 2022, and then president of the University of Michigan from 2022 to May 2025.

Endorsing Race Discrimination at the University of Michigan

In his inaugural address to UM just two years ago, Ono listed a “Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) 2.0” initiative as a major focus of his presidency, and promoted a U-M “Inclusive History Project” that aims to result in “reparations” based on race “in areas such as admissions, financial aid, and faculty and staff hiring, promotion, and compensation.” Ono celebrated the DEI 2.0 and Inclusive History Project initiatives as “a better way to deliver on the promises of justice, inclusion and diversity.”

Ono also celebrated UM defending racially discriminatory admissions before the U.S. Supreme Court in a precedent recently overturned: “Previous U-M presidents Lee Bollinger and Mary Sue Coleman set an example by going to the Supreme Court to defend admissions policies intended to achieve a more diverse student body.”

“Racism is one of America’s original sins, and the University of Michigan has not been immune,” he said. In that speech, Ono also claimed, “The climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time.”

In October 2024, just seven months ago, UM’s “DEI 2.0 Year 1 Progress report” quoted Ono: “Our dedication to academic excellence is deeply intertwined with our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The report with Ono’s endorsement right at the top described DEI 2.0 as a “presidential initiative,” and noted that the university’s DEI plan included selecting students for programs, scholarships, and honors based on race. The plan Ono heralded also required professors to be race-conscious in teaching and grading.

The UM DEI 2.0 report singled out “anti-racism” as a key feature of the university’s DEI efforts, stating that “Anti-racism explicitly challenges systems and norms grounded in white supremacy and anti-Blackness.” “Key themes” that “continue to guide our DEI work” included “Address any discriminatory policies, resource accessibility, and identity recognition for LGBTQIA2S+ community members.”

His public DEI advocacy and personal endorsement of a discriminatory comprehensive university plan are strong evidence Ono’s relabeling of UM’s DEI bureaucracy months ago would never have happened without Trump administration pressure.

A Long Career of Celebrating DEI

It wasn’t just at UM. Ono has promoted corrosive, anti-excellence DEI discrimination in every university post he has held. In a promotional video recorded when he left the University of British Columbia for UM in 2022, Ono told the interviewer, “I’m really proud” of three signature initiatives he undertook at UBC.

Those were the university’s “Indigenous Strategic Plan,” its “Climate Action Plan,” and its “ARIE task force report.” ARIE stands for “anti-racism-inclusive excellence.” He stated these are “considered to be the standard globally” for woke activism at universities.

As Peter Wood notes in The Wall Street Journal, the “antiracism” plan Ono pushed at UBC “explicitly called for ‘preferential’ race-based hiring of faculty, the establishment of a ‘Black student application program’ for prospective medical students, a ‘zero-tolerance policy’ for faculty and staff who resisted DEI re-education, and mandatory training for students and faculty on ‘colonialism, anti-racism, decolonization and intersectionality.’ This isn’t education — it’s indoctrination.”

At the University of Cincinnati, “Ono authorized funding to create the Black Faculty Association and the Hispanic/Latino Affinity Group to foster collaboration and help find new strategies for recruiting more minority teachers,” according to a local outlet. UC’s DEI vice president told WCPO Cincinnati that Ono “has been the best president we’ve had that’s dealt with the issue of diversity and inclusion,” and predicted “a rainbow coalition” would attend Ono’s eventual funeral. 

In 2019, Ono gave a TED Talk in which he demanded awards, positions, and grants be distributed on the basis of sex, because “far too many awards go to men.” “There’s a pressing need to challenge gender discrimination ingrained in cultures … in the United States, all around the world,” he claimed. “I believe it’s one of the major problems that still has to be dealt with.”

Research shows differences in career outcomes between Western men and women are almost wholly a result of life choices and biology (i.e., only women get pregnant), not discrimination.

Pay No Attention to My Entire Career

Both the UF board of trustees and the Florida higher education Board of Governors must approve Ono’s candidacy. The Board of Governors oversees all state higher education institutions. Florida’s governor appoints 14 of the 17 Board of Governors members.

Of the UF board’s 13 members, Florida’s governor appoints six and the Board of Governors appoints another five. DeSantis and Republican former Gov. Rick Scott have filled these boards with their current occupants. If the UF trustees vote for Ono on May 27, the Board of Governors will consider his candidacy at its June 3 meeting.

“The governor has appointed great people to the Board of Governors who are conservative and aligned, and he has confidence in their ability to act appropriately in a scenario such as this,” a DeSantis official told The Federalist.

DeSantis has faced criticism for not flatly rejecting Ono’s candidacy in his usual no-nonsense style. Potential Casey DeSantis 2026 gubernatorial opponent Rep. Byron Donalds has publicly called for UF trustees to vote Ono down and find another candidate.

Ono claims he’s become less supportive of DEI since being considered for UF’s presidency, touting his relabeling of DEI staff at the University of Michigan nearly two months after the Trump administration ordered universities to do so or lose billions in federal funds. The eight UF trustees whose email addresses were available did not answer Federalist requests for comment on whether they have asked Ono to explain his conveniently timed rhetorical shift on what he has for decades called a “very important” component of his career.

Board of Governors Vice Chair Alan Levine claimed on X this month that relabeling DEI staff under federal pressure might outweigh Ono’s lifetime use of institutional power to push race and sex discrimination: “He eliminated the DEI office at Michigan. He faced threats and vandalism for standing up to the pro-palestinian/anti-israel/anti-US movement on campus.”

But “Mr. Ono failed to meet the moment during last year’s antisemitic convulsions in Ann Arbor,” notes Wood. “He allowed an antisemitic encampment in the center of Michigan’s campus to drag on for 30 days. Meanwhile, in Gainesville under Mr. Sasse’s leadership, there were no encampments. Mr. Ono’s lax approach led to violence against multiple university policy officers, extensive vandalism and the disruption of classes. His handling of the situation earned Michigan an F on the Anti-Defamation League’s 2024 Antisemitism Report Card, whereas the institution Mr. Ono seeks to lead earned an A under its prior management.”

While his UF candidacy was under consideration, Ono 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.

UF trustees moved their vote on Ono from their regular meeting on June 5 to a special meeting on May 27 after the Memorial Day weekend, possibly to avoid increased scrutiny of Ono’s candidacy.

Under Sasse in 2022, for the first time in its history UF ranked in the top five of public U.S. universities. He scrapped the university’s DEI office and contracts, halted pro-terrorist student encampments, and worked to forbid political indoctrination in classrooms.

Last year, U.S. News ranked UF the sixth best public college in the nation, and Forbes magazine ranked UF number 4 out of the top 25 U.S. public universities. The Wall Street Journal labeled UF under Sasse “The Harvard of the Unwoke” and ranked it the No. 1 U.S. public university.

In 2024, applications to UF nearly doubled compared to 2020, at a time of declining college enrollment nationwide. Sasse told WSJ last year UF admissions had risen to “edge-of-Ivy-League-level” in academic quality. Florida-based journalist Karol Markowicz says this spring wealthy private-school families report their kids had a harder time getting into UF than into Harvard and Stanford, due to Sasse’s anti-woke, pro-America leadership.