Santa Ono Failed Jewish Students. Why is Florida Rewarding Him?

It makes sense that Santa Ono, the recently departed president of the University of Michigan, is angling to move from Ann Arbor to Gainesville to take up the presidency of the University of Florida. Better weather, rising reputation, fleeing controversy. What makes a lot less sense is why the UF Board of Trustees have chosen Ono as their last, best, and only option.

Florida’s Congressional delegation, multiple education reform organizations, and even Donald Trump Jr. have spoken out about Ono’s record of support for crazy DEI programs and fossil fuel divestment. But too little attention has been paid to his abject, verifiable failure during the infamous pro-Hamas encampments of 2024. Ono talks a good game on antisemitism, and he has a cheery personal style. But when the chips were down, Ono spectacularly failed to enforce the rules against an illegal, weeks-long encampment promoting Jew-hatred of the Free-Palestine, Jihadist variety. Let’s roll the tape, so to speak:

In the wake of Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7, 2023, Ono allowed a terrorist encampment at the University of Michigan to remain up for 30 days. That’s one day less than Columbia University’s infamous encampment, which resulted in the ouster of their president. For weeks on end, the Hamasniks sprayed graffiti, chanted antisemitic slogan, removed pavement, and impeded the free movement of students. They violated the civil rights of Jewish students. Ono had the authority, ability, and responsibility to remove the encampment, but he refused.

Lawlessness breeds lawlessness. In Ono’s own words, “participants in the encampment helped organize” and “issued calls on social media” for a protest at the university’s art museum. They committed (again, in Ono’s words) “what can only be described as an assault on law enforcement officers.” Multiple police officers sustained minor injuries. There is no evidence of Mr. Ono expelling a single student during these weeks of antisemitic rioting.

It hardly needs to be said, but we all know that Mr. Ono and his ilk would have immediately shut down a campus encampment targeting any minority group other than the Jews. This is the logic of DEI at work.

Perhaps more outrageous than his fecklessness is Mr. Ono’s explanation for why he allowed an antisemitic encampment to disrupt his university for 30 days. He claims he didn’t break up the pro-Hamas encampment because a subset of Jewish students didn’t want him to. Ono seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that Jewish students across the country were under tremendous pressure to play nice with rioters calling for their extermination.

He also seems oblivious to the fact that, when university rules are violated and chaos ensues, real leaders do not take a poll or hold focus groups. They act decisively. The presidents of universities like Dartmouth, Washington University in St. Louis, UNC Chapel Hill, and – yes – the University of Florida did not consult opinion polls when faced with the prospect of terrorist encampments. They acted.

Ono likes to boast that he suspended the pro-Hamas group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The trouble is that he waited until January 2025 to do so—after letting it terrorize Michigan’s campus and Jewish students for over a year. Even Columbia acted faster, shutting down SJP in November 2023. It’s hard to see this as a profile in courage. Let’s be honest, Columbia is a low bar. Moreover, Ono waited until after the election of President Trump to suspend SJP – a move clearly calculated to avoid civil rights investigations.

Now that he’s interviewing for the job at UF, he says that antisemitism is “a uniquely virulent and persistent threat.” But what did he say before this job was on the horizon? When Congress was investigating the very same “uniquely virulent and persistent threat” of antisemitism, Ono said that they should have been investigating Islamophobia too. Hetold a group of department chairs, “The pressure from Congress is not balanced. It’s focused almost entirely on antisemitism, which I think is an issue. But there is also Islamophobia as well.” This sort of false equivalence is typical of a university administrator who refuses to see what is going on under his nose. Hundreds of students had occupied Michigan’s central quad to target Jews – not Muslims. Ono allowed it.

On Tuesday, the Board of Governors will follow the UF trustees and take a final vote on Ono’s candidacy. Ono will offer fine words about combatting antisemitism. But the governors should look not at his words, but his deeds. They speak for themselves.