Santa J. Ono, the besieged president of the University of Michigan of only three years, plans to exchange “The Big House” in Ann Arbor for “The Swamp” in Gainesville.
After a long and secret search, Ono was selected on Sunday as the only finalist to take the bar as president of the University of Florida and put an end to a post of almost a year, assuming that it is approved by university administrators and the Council of State Governors, as planned. He would start working at UF later this summer.
The UF announced ono its choice to become its 14th president after an “extensive and exhaustive process” which included the holding of 450 potential candidates, said Rahul Patel, president of the presidential research committee. In the end, the Committee reduced the scope of candidates to nearly 10 presidents in office of major research institutions, he said-which is strongly deviated from the choice of the university of its last president, the former American senator Ben Sasse.
The “proven register of academic excellence, innovation and collaborative leadership in world class institutions has made our unanimous choice,” said Patel. “We are convinced that he is the right person to rely on the solid UF foundation and help to achieve our daring vision of the future.”
Ono is a highly respected immunologist who was president at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Cincinnati.
But Ono has something of a controversial assessment in Michigan, in particular in the way he managed Pro-Palestinian demonstrations after the attack on Hamas on October 7 and the Israeli counterattacks.
UF's work opened when Sasse suddenly resigned last July after 17 months of work. The former president of the UF, Kent Fuchs, was acting president in the interval.
Ono's salary has not yet been negotiated, but the research committee has set a higher limit of $ 3 million per year.
Ono’s decision to leave Ann Arbor comes six months after renewing his contract with UM until 2032, which included the increase in his base salary of $ 975,000 per year to $ 1.3 million per year.
“Serving as president in the past three academic years has been a separate honor,” said Ono on the University of Michigan website. “Each day, I was inspired beyond the words by the dynamism, the brilliance and the dedication of our faculty, our staff, our students and our former students.”
Some observers have called the move in Florida one step down. The University of Michigan is 21st in total among national universities and the 3rd among public universities, according to the annual classification of the US News & World Report for 2025. UF is classified 30th at the national level and 7th among public schools.
The UF board of directors requires a 21 -day cooling period before it can vote to confirm the appointment of Ono. From there, he went to the Council of State of Governors for final approval.
Fuchs called Ono a “dream candidate”.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the UF, Mori Hosseini, a developer of Daytona Beach with deep ties with Governor Ron Desantis, said that he supported “this unanimous recommendation and I have confidence in Dro's ability to guide the UF towards even more important success”.
While UF's senior officials welcomed ONO's administrative and academic attributes, others have raised concerns about the closed -door nature of the research process.
The Union of Professors of the University of Florida was “opposed to the bill on the secret of presidential research, in particular the phenomenon of the” single finalist “, said Meera Sitharam, president of the UF section of the Faculty Syndicate, referring to the law of 2022 which made the name of all candidates and meetings of confidential presidential searches until a list of finalists announced.
“Does a president who accepts the secret in his own selection defends academic freedom in the face of political attacks?” Sitharam asked. “Will he resist those who hold the Stockings of the Stock Exchange and support the institutional autonomy that the public of Florida has devoted to the Constitution of the State?”
Ono is expected to visit the UF on Tuesday to meet teachers, students and administrators and answer their questions.
The announcement of hiring Ono intervened a few days after the legislative assembly did not repeal the law of 2022. The supporters of the status declared at the time that they would guarantee that they obtained the best possible candidates, while the opponents declared that it had simply been used to hide the machinations behind political appointments.
The law was blamed for political appointments like Sasse, former American senator from Nebraska with a minimum of experience as president of a small university in the midwest.
Ono faced his share of challenges and controversies.
He was criticized for his management of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his position on student activism, according to several newspapers. Sound and several university officials have vandalized their homes.
At least 12 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested for demonstrations on the campus. Ono faced demonstrations for having seemed insensitive to the suffering of the Palestinians, and he canceled a vote by the student government linked to the conflict in Gaza.
Ono was also called for speaking at a conference of the anti-diploma league on anti-Semitism and hatred after the ADL was castigated for defending Elon Musk's salvation during the inauguration of Trump that criticisms described as Nazis.
It was forced by the Trump administration to dismantle the progressive DEI, diversity, equity and UM inclusion program, and announced a move to scuttle it two months ago. UF has dismantled its DEI program as required by the law of the state.
Sasse served from February 2023 to July 2024, citing the health of his wife as a reason to resign. The university continues to pay its salary by $ 1 million until 2028.
But the school newspaper, the independent alligator of Florida, cited the tensions between Sasse and the chairman of the board of directors Hosseini.
The Alligator reported massive irregularities in Sasse, which led millions to its inner circle, including $ 7.2 million to consultants for strategic planning. The article drew the attention of the CFO Jimmy Patronis, who ordered an audit of sasse spending which found several cases of unauthorized expenses.
Sasse also drew national attention to the way he managed Pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus after the bombing of Hamas on October 7 of Gaza. Campus police arrested nine demonstrators last April, including six UF students who were prohibited from the campus indefinitely and faced criminal charges.
