If Santa Ono’s discipline had been history instead of medicine, he might appreciate his pivotal role as martyr to the New Inquisition.
The Church went after the likes of Galileo because it feared that scientists might undermine blind faith in holy doctrine.
The new inquisitors crucified Ono for the same reason…their paranoia that educators, left to their own devices, will erode mass indifference to the new autocrats who are consolidating power from Florida to D.C.
We are in an age where government lawyers go into court and argue, with straight faces, that the state has the absolute right to censor textbooks, dictate what is taught or even said in classrooms, and purge educators for straying from strict neo-autocratic doctrine.
We are living in an age where the President can declare war on Harvard on a whim. And the President’s feckless tech bros can arbitrarily withhold billions in federal support for everything from cancer research to hurricane tracking.
The tragedy of Santa Ono is that, to secure the plum job of President of the University of Florida, he embraced the role of remorseful penitent.
Facing his inquisitors Ono dutifully confessed to, and publicly atoned for, all his past sins: His support of DEI, academic freedom, the First Amendment and more.
And it seemed to be working. Everybody loves a reformed sinner, and his first inquisitors, UF trustees, were prepared to grant Ono absolution. With the admonishment that he go forth and sin no more.
Alas, where Ono went wrong – possibly because his discipline is in medicine and not history – is that he failed to note the emergence of an autocratic schism of the sort that once split the Church into two Holy Sees.
In this case, a jealous pope (Trump) wanted to humiliate an upstart bishop (our Great DeSanitizer) for having the temerity to challenge his supremacy as Autocrat In Chief.
Trump’s acolytes (Donald Jr., Rick Scott and a host of other MAGA minions) resolved to undermine the upstart Florida bishop’s power base.
By the time Ono came before his second trial by inquisition, this one at the hands of the governors of the State University System, the papal plot was well and truly set into motion.
Ono never had a prayer.
Basically a man who had built a solid reputation as a career university president naively entered the Church of Florida, donned sackcloth and ashes and prostrated himself…for no heavenly reward whatsoever.
Whether Santa Ono will be able to reinvent himself elsewhere is anybody’s guess…he seems a malleable enough fellow. But it takes no guesswork at all to understand that the University of Florida will be a long time reclaiming its once impeccable flagship pedigree.
After the Ben Sasse and Santa Ono fiascos it is difficult to image any nationally reputable member of The Academy seeking, or even wanting, the top job in Tigert.
There will be no latter day Robert Quarrels Marston, John Lombardi or Bernie Machen coming to rehabilitate UF’s reputation any time soon.
Listen, there is a reason so many Florida university and colleges presidents are being recruited from the ranks of politicians and their hangers-on. It is the same reason the Church once employed inquisitors to repress education and science.
The Church of Florida Autocracy demands obedience. If that requires putting institutions of enlightenment under the thumbs of loyal inquisitors so be it.
The Dark Age of higher education repression is here.
FreeGNV 