Jun.06

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

This Week in Schadenfreude: I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)

Anyone in academia knows that high-ranking university administrators are often—How can we put this delicately?—conniving sleazeballs. As we have noted recently, "university administrator" is basically a political posting, and so university administrators tend to be, well, politicians. The higher up they are, and the more elite the university is, the more likely that is to be true. Particularly galling—and this is not an uncommon phenomenon—is when the president/provost/chancellor is just using their current job as a stepping stone to the next, better-paying, more glamorous job, and everybody knows it.

Santa Ono, former president of the University of Michigan and aspiring president of the University of Florida, is such a person, by all indications. There is no question that he has a sterling résumé as a scholar and an administrator. But from the moment he got the Michigan gig in 2022, it was clear his eye was on something more... sunny and southerly, let's say. And so, he went into full pandering mode. For example:

• When then-football coach Jim Harbaugh was enmeshed in a cheating scandal (for which he ultimately served a suspension), Ono was right there on the scene, posing for pictures with the coach and lamenting the injustice of it all. The clear message was that winning football games is very, very important, more important than things like honesty, integrity, the rules, etc. This is a worldview that will find many adherents in places that really, really love football—like, say, the South.
  
  
• When graduate students went on strike, Ono said that he's a big supporter of organized labor, and then... did everything he could to break the back of the strike.
  
  
• During the protests over the war in Gaza, Ono deployed university police to come down hard on pro-Palestinian protestors, going so far as to have them raid a (peaceful) encampment. He also stepped in and forbade student government from voting on a pair of resolutions that would have condemned the Israeli government.
  
  
• Ono was a supporter of DEI initiatives... until he wasn't. As last year's elections reached their climax, he took steps to dismantle Michigan's DEI programs. Recently, he wrote an op-ed in which he explained that he agreed with the original intent of DEI, but that it had become perverted, and was now about divisiveness and not giving white people a fair shake.

Much of this will presumably sound familiar, because we wrote about it exactly one week ago, in the context of Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) ever-more-shaky grasp on power. We noted, in that piece, that the regents of the university had approved Ono, which was a rebuke to DeSantis, since conservatives believe that if you are DEI for a day, then you are DEI for life, no matter what you might say or do. It's very much like the people who went to one communist meeting in 1936, and then saw their lives ruined for it in 1953. The main difference is that the anti-DEI people—DeSantis, Donald Trump Jr., Marge Greene, etc.—are more fanatical than Joseph McCarthy and the McCarthyites (which would actually be a pretty good band name).

This week, however, Ono got some bad news. The Florida Board of Governors, which was appointed by DeSantis, normally rubber stamps the choice of the Regents. But not this time; because many of them are anti-woke/anti-DEI fanatics, they voted 10-6 to reject Ono. So, it's back to the drawing board, as the University of Florida looks to replace Ben Sasse (who, incidentally, was also too "woke," although his downfall was primarily due to financial mismanagement).

So, it's a "win" for DeSantis, which is going to happen sometimes; you know what they say about the sun shining on a dog's a**. Ono, on the other hand, sold out whatever principles he has (it's hard to tell what these sorts of politicians believe in, or if they believe in anything at all) for a job, and then didn't get the job. And he quit his old gig to pursue this gig, so he doesn't have the Michigan job either, anymore. Given how he's comported himself, there's certainly some schadenfreude in that. (Z)