The Michigan Daily sat down with University President Santa Ono Monday morning to discuss Campus Plan 2050, University responses to campus tensions and conversations surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion. The Daily provided Ono with the questions prior to the interview. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Michigan Daily: The University Board of Regents voted to extend your contract to 2032. In the past two years of your tenure, what do you think was your greatest success?
Santa Ono: I brought this three-volume set of our plans. This is called Campus Plan 2050, and you can see the 3,600 acres of campus that we have multi-decade plans for. There’s not enough residence halls; we heard that from students. This is essentially bringing to life a lot of the priorities of what we call Vision 2034, which is a 10-year plan.
This is really thinking about how we’re going to change and transform the campus to animate and bring to life what we’re going to do, everything from Central Campus, North Campus, to the Ross Athletic Campus. You can see some of it already happening. The D. Dan and Betty Kahn Pavilion, which is a much needed expansion of the hospital, will allow us to renovate other parts of the hospital to provide state-of-the-art care. There’s a new rec center going up, which is much needed because we don’t have enough recreational space for students. Those are just a couple of the examples.
Another thing that we’re very excited about is Marygrove College, which was an under-enrolled Catholic school that, with a significant investment from the Kresge Foundation, we’ve been able to renovate those buildings. The dormitories have been totally renovated, and an entire cohort of students from the Marsal School of Education are now actually situated in Detroit, where they can actually participate with students and faculty from other schools to impact the educational experience of K-12 students who are going through that school. Our students are there, and it gives them an outstanding opportunity to directly be involved in the transformation of public education in a major metropolitan area.
We’ve launched a couple of new institutes as part of this vision. We very recently launched a new Institute for Civil Discourse, and we’re very excited with that. We’re going to look for an outstanding director for that program, and it’s a place where faculty, students and staff from all three campuses and all 19 colleges of the Ann Arbor campus will be able to participate in modeling of civil discourse across a set of difficult issues — but also be sort of a sandbox for faculty from all three campuses, but also hopefully from other universities and also other institutions to come to create curriculum and create opportunities to share civil discourse.
There are a number of other things that will actually animate the priorities of Vision 2034, in terms of investments and programs, and in some cases, new institutes and new buildings. That’s kind of what I’m most excited about at the University of Michigan. We’re already hitting the ground running with actually moving forward with the implementation of some of these priorities through investments and launching new institutes and a recruitment of outstanding people to the University.
TMD: What would you have done differently?
SO: I want to be even more ambitious for the University. Some people have said Campus Plan 2050 is pretty ambitious, but this is a great university, and my responsibility is to elevate it even further.
TMD: According to a Nov. 20 letter sent to the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs by Senate Chair Rebekah Modrak, the Board of Regents are allegedly considering defunding certain DEI initiatives. In a Dec. 1 interview between Regent Sarah Hubbard (R) and Fox News, Hubbard explained the board would take a critical look at programs and spending to analyze DEI results. While University Provost Laurie McCauley issued a Nov. 27 letter to officials explaining that DEI will not fully be defunded, and the Go Blue Guarantee has expanded, has the administration considered cutting DEI measures?
SO: I’m really excited about that investment in the Go Blue Guarantee. Where we are right now, the landscape is shifting quite as we speak with the executive orders. We have a responsibility as a public university to work within federal guidelines and also be true to our values. There are no decisions that I know of right now. It is true, as I think Regent Hubbard said, and perhaps others have said, that there have been conversations that the Regents, as the overseers of the University, have asked general questions. It’s true that the Provost is central with the other executive vice presidents to thinking about the transition to a new government, but I’m not aware of any decisions at this point. I think that there’s a transfer transition group that’s thinking about all these things, but I think that’s the extent of where we are right now.
TMD: At a recent meeting and in a letter sent Jan. 23, the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs criticized both you and the Board of Regents for your response to former executive director of the Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives Rachel Dawson’s firing, urging you to restore her to her post. Dawson was fired after she was accused of saying Jewish students were “wealthy and privileged” and did not need diversity services in a private conversation with two other educators. Despite receiving a warning and instructions to receive training, she was fired shortly after Regent Bernstein wrote to President Ono calling for her termination. SACUA voiced concern over regental opinions influencing the processes of investigations and discipline of University personnel and called for safeguards against the removal of members of the University for politically-charged reasons. How were you involved in addressing the allegations against Dawson?
SO: I know that it’s been stated that I responded to that situation. I don’t think I have. This is an HR matter, so I can’t say more, but thank you for this question.
TMD: The University updated the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities. In the updated SSRR, the University can now act as a complainant against students, whereas before all complaints were filed by students, faculty or staff members. Why has the University decided to make this change?
SO: It’s pretty common at other Big Ten universities and many other universities that not only can faculty, staff and students make complaints when there’s a case of discrimination or wrongdoing, but as you may appreciate, sometimes it’s very hard for someone in a very difficult situation to actually make a complaint. They may not feel safe. It could be somebody who might have had sexual abuse or harassment or something like that, and there could be a power imbalance. That’s the reason why, in many universities, it’s possible for the university to complain on their behalf. I think that’s the primary driver, is to try to get into alignment with other institutions.
The other change that was made was that for both the complainant and the alleged perpetrator, it was taking a very long time to go through a process, and that doesn’t help either party. It’s very difficult for someone who might have been wrong to wait for a long time, especially if they’re feeling unsafe. If you imagine that something happened to you, you want to have some kind of resolution, whatever the transgression might be. It’s also important that there’s due process — every individual who is an alleged perpetrator is actually perhaps not guilty of what has been alleged. It’s also very, very difficult for that individual to wait a very long time. For that reason, I think that the University put forward some sort of time frame to try to complete those processes.
TMD: During times of heightened campus tensions, how do you draw the line between free speech and disruption? How do you reconcile with those who feel their free speech rights have been infringed upon?
SO: This is one of the most difficult questions that even the best legal scholars globally are reviewing and writing about today. If you are a private university, you have a little bit more latitude. If you’re a public university, we are beholden to the First Amendment. It’s also true that we settle with the Office for Civil Rights. We also have Title VI obligations from the Civil Rights Amendment. You can have a situation where something is stated that is verging on hate speech, very, very hurtful, and that happens all the time, but hasn’t crossed the line where it is viewed as something that, through the speech alone, is problematic. Then you have the First Amendment obligation of the institution. It would be very difficult for an institution to penalize somebody for that. You have to actually analyze it on a case-by-case basis. That kind of capacity is something that’s not existent in all institutions. We have to create it in our Equity, Civil Rights & Title IX Office, and a Title VI coordinator who’s an expert in that.
Even with that, there are differences of opinion about a particular case or whether it has crossed the line into hate speech. It’s not straightforward. The significant step that we and some other institutions have made is to dedicate resources to a Title VI expert at the institution. For fairness, it’s important to evaluate things on a case-by-case basis, because it’s very nuanced. It’s very fluid, just like Title IX. Things are changing with the government as well. Not only do you have someone who understands the laws of the land, but also understands how they shift with time as governments change.
TMD: Newly inaugurated President Donald Trump, his administration and the GOP have been vocally opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, inspiring many DEI programs to roll back plans. Chris Kolb, the vice president for government relations, shared at a Dec. 5 Board of Regents meeting that DEI programs in higher education are expected to be targeted. How will you respond to the stance toward DEI as a public institution that has held a prominent commitment to DEI since 2015?
SO: It’s not up to me to respond. This is an institution with 53,000 students and a similar number of employees. This university has played a very consequential role in many of the things that are being called to question right now through executive orders, and all of those are being studied by a transition team here at the University. Chris Kolb was a member, but so is the provost, and so is the chief financial officer and others. These are complicated matters that the president of the university should not respond to as one individual. Whatever we do as an institution has to be guided by input from faculty, staff and students, and that’s happening. There’s a whole transition team thinking about that.
It’s early days, this is one week into the Trump administration. Certainly, all institutions have to take very seriously executive orders that come from the president of the United States. Certainly we will do so. It’s just a little bit early for me to say. These conversations are happening, and we will certainly work with the government, both federal and state moving forward, because we’re a public university.
TMD: As a leader in higher education, you’ve taught countless students and witnessed them embark on their own individual academic journeys. As a former student yourself, what was the most memorable moment of your own college experience?
SO: I went to University of Chicago, and I’m very proud of that great university, just like the University of Michigan. The most memorable moments were those late nights, those arguments in our dorms and in the library and in the cafeterias. My wish for all University of Michigan students is that you have the same kinds of experiences that will form you, but also that you’ll remain together as a friend group for the rest of your lives.
Daily News Editors Marissa Corsi and Barrett Dolata can be reached at macorsi@umich.edu and bdolata@umich.edu. Daily Staff Reporter Lyra Wilder can be reached at lyrawild@umich.edu.
The post Santa Ono sits down with The Daily to talk Campus Plan 2050, DEI in higher education and campus tensions appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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