Walking the GOP track
By 
The distressing spectacle at the University of Michigan this past week is captured well by this piece in the CHE from Silke-Maria Weineck.
The short version is that five Democratic regents published an extremely restrained op-ed in the Michigan Daily, the university’s excellent student newspaper, suggesting that authoritarianism is bad for universities. The words “Donald Trump,” “DEI,” and other triggering phrases didn’t appear, but still . . . implicit criticism!
The Daily piece is fairly anodyne. It does not mention Trump by name, and its most bellicose lines are: “Independence is not only important for academic excellence, but also essential to democracy. Universities exist to challenge assumptions, test ideas and create space for independent thinking, even when that thinking runs against the grain of popular opinion or political ideology. This is especially true when they attempt to raise the next generation. That’s why authoritarian regimes so often seek control over their universities. Free inquiry is a threat to unchecked power.”
It’s hard to disagree with that (though our two Republican regents and one of the Democratic ones apparently did). Unchecked power is indeed a threat, particularly from the current regime. “Ignorance, allied with power,” as James Baldwin put it, is “the most ferocious enemy justice can have,” and it is also a bad combination for universities.
It turns out that the university’s president, Santa Ono, was asked to sign it but refused. Now we know why:
Over the weekend, University of Michigan President Santa Ono announced that he was leaving his post to take up the leadership of the University of Florida. It was an interesting choice. It’s been reported that Ono had been warier of resisting or challenging the dictates of the Trump administration than the majority of the University’s Board of Regents, the members of which are elected in statewide elections. The majority of appointees to the University of Florida’s board are appointed by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis.
So on quite a few levels it’s a very different operation and a pretty different job. Florida has essentially given professional anti-woke hard boy Chris Rufo the run of the state university system. It’s not unfair to say that if you’re the President of the University of Florida you work for Ron DeSantis. But they pay well. The Times reported that Ono is slated to make up to $3 million a year in compensation, more than any other public university president in the country. That’s more than twice what he made at Michigan.
Now I get that money talks and it’s persuasive, but Ono got a 33% raise last October, with a contract extension that was going to pay him a seven-figure base plus all the usual emoluments through 2032.
But you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows:
Ono had been one of the signatories of the public letter in defense of academic freedom organized by American Association of Colleges and Universities and signed by the presidents and leaders of more than 150 colleges and universities (original version of signatory list here). Along with Harvard’s decision to sue the Trump administration, the AACU letter was seen as a key sign of mounting resistance to Trump administration attacks by the leaders of American higher education. But I’m told that today Ono contacted the AACU and asked that his name be removed from the list of signatories. And, indeed, the public version of the letter hosted on the AACU website no longer lists his name.
New boss, new rules.
Smile and grin at the change all around . . .
Just for some context, when I was an undergrad in Ann Arbor, the university’s president Harold Shapiro was making $290K per year IN 2025 DOLLARS. So less than one tenth of what the plastic Ono presidency is going to be pulling in, assuming he ends up making it to the swamp where the strange green reptiles grow (see below). Shapiro eventually left for Princeton, and his successor Lee Bollinger decamped for Columbia. I mean those are lateral moves that make sense from Ann Arbor and environs, but I guess Ono decided Tom Pettyville is just a little more life somewhere else, at least at a cool three million per year.
The best part of this story so far is that even after Ono’s Ritual Recantation of Wokeness, the usual right wing lunatics are trying to block this move:
Some conservatives this week expressed opposition to Ono’s selection by the UF search committee. At least in part, they argued Ono had praised diversity, equity and inclusion in the past.
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a Naples Republican who is running for governor next year, appeared on Fox Business News and said the UF presidential search process should be restarted.
“We have been clear about DEI not being a pillar of our educational systems in Florida,” Donalds said in a statement. “It does not comport with the values of the state of Florida.”
Christopher Rufo, a DeSantis appointee to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees, lambasted Ono on X as “a left-wing administrator who recently declared his support for ‘DEI 2.0’ and claimed that ‘the climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time.’”
DeSantis, however, said Florida led the nation in removing DEI programs and that for college administrators a few years ago “it was everywhere. It was the price of admission to be involved in these universities at the time.”
It would be pretty freaking funny if Ono’s decision to damn the torpedoes and steam full speed ahead founders on the craggy shores of Florida’s favorite fascist, Christopher Rufo. It would be even funnier if Michigan’s non- Trump fluffing regents then decide see ya wouldn’t want to be ya.
The whole thing is just incredibly disgusting, but men are as the time is as somebody very woke indeed once put it.