Florida HBCU president asks leadership team to resign after ‘fradulent’ $237m donation

Just two weeks before the 2024-2025 school year begins and one week into his tenure, the interim president of Florida A&M University, Timothy Beard, has called on the leadership team to resign.

“As you know, our University (Famu) is at a critical juncture, where we must align our leadership, vision, and strategies to meet the evolving challenges and opportunities ahead,” Beard wrote in his letter, first reported by HBCU Gameday.

“After careful consideration and in consultation with the Board of Trustees, the past University President, and from my observations, I have concluded that a change in our senior leadership team is necessary to move forward more effectively.”

Beard elaborated to the Tallahassee Democrat on Tuesday that the move was “part of the overall process of evaluating the leadership team.

“One way that we do that is to request for the submission of resignations, but that does not mean I’m going to accept all the resignations in terms of the team members leaving the institution,” he told the publication.

At least four members of the leadership team have now resigned and had their resignation accepted.

On Monday, there were approximately 20 members. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were 15, according to a list on the university’s website .

Famu is currently without a communicators director, a chief legal officer for its board of trustees, an athletics director and a government relations director.

Famu’s recent troubles started after a “fraudulent” and highly publicized $237m donation to the university by a Texas hemp farmer. A nearly 200-page investigation into the donation, released earlier this month, found that the gift, which would have been transformative for the institution, was poorly vetted and rushed. The board of trustees has called for accountability. The former Famu president Larry Robinson recently resigned following the scandal.

Though Beard said he consulted Famu’s board of trustees and Robinson about the call for resignations, ultimately the decision was his own.

“They may speak broadly in terms of our strengths and weaknesses as a university, but when it comes to the senior leadership team and individual employees, that’s on me as the president,” he said on Tuesday.

Beard’s decision to terminate members of his closest staff follows a precedent set by Robinson when he himself was interim president almost a decade ago. The then president fired a provost, chief of staff, assistant vice-president for communications and three other assistants to the president.

“I’ve been studying the team. I’ve also been looking at the bold and striking strategic plan,” the interim president told reporters on Wednesday. “I want to make sure the personnel is appropriate to make sure those strategies are completed. We make decisions based on the plan and accountability.”

• This article was amended on 16 August 2024 to clarify that Timothy Beard has called on the university’s leadership team to resign, as quotes from his letter show. In an earlier version, the headline and parts of the article referred to the team as “the board”.