The Quiet Coup That Threatens FAMU’s Future

Get the Point!

By Cecyl Hobbs

This isn’t academic for me. My family has been invested in Florida A&M for generations. My parents met as students at FAMU. My sisters and I earned our degrees here. My grandmother attended FAMU. My grand uncle is enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Like so many others, we’ve entrusted our futures — and our children’s futures — to this institution.

What’s at stake in this proposed presidential contract for Marva Johnson isn’t simply who leads the university for the next five years — it’s whether FAMU retains the institutional discipline to serve generations to come.

The Numbers Don’t Lie — But They Don’t Tell the Whole Story Either

The raw financial commitments are staggering:

$650,000 base salary — a 44% jump over the prior president, with no demonstrated track record in higher education to justify it.

Automatic 3% annual increases locked in regardless of performance.

$150,000 retention bonuses at years 3 and 5 — essentially paying someone extra just to show up.

Total potential package exceeding $4.2 million over five years when you factor in all the perks, bonuses, and guarantees.

$450,000 annually that the FAMU Foundation must cover beyond what the state will fund.

That last point deserves emphasis: The Board just committed the Foundation to nearly half a million dollars per year for five years! Has anyone bothered to ask whether the Foundation can actually sustain this burden while meeting its other obligations to students and faculty?

“Performance Standards” That Aren’t Standards At All

The contract pays lip service to performance accountability, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: what passes for rigor in this arrangement wouldn’t survive a freshman logic course.

Vague references to “strategic plans” and “Board of Governors metrics” without specific targets.

No quantitative benchmarks for enrollment growth, graduation rates, fundraising goals, or research output.

No meaningful consequences for failing to move the needle on FAMU’s most pressing challenges.

Let us not confuse the theatre of accountability with the architecture of it. Johnson gets paid the same whether FAMU thrives or continues to struggle; that’s not a performance contract — it’s a guaranteed payday with performance pageantry attached!

The Faculty Appointment Guarantee: Tenure Without Earning It

Perhaps the most egregious provision guarantees Johnson a tenured faculty position at FAMU’s College of Law upon completion of her presidential term — despite having zero prior experience in higher education.

Read that again: Someone with no academic credentials gets automatic tenure at a law school based solely on serving as president! This isn’t just bad governance — it’s an insult to every faculty member who actually earned their tenure through scholarship, teaching, and service.

Further, this provision alone creates a permanent financial obligation for the institution regardless of whether Johnson’s presidency succeeds or fails spectacularly.

Let’s Call the Political Reality What It Is

The governance problems here can’t be separated from the political context — and we do ourselves no favors by pretending otherwise:

Johnson was selected on an 8-4 Board vote — with every single DeSantis-appointed trustee voting yes.

Her previous role as DeSantis-appointed chair of the State Board of Education isn’t some peripheral credential — it’s the primary qualification that mattered.

The five-year contract term ensures political influence over FAMU’s leadership well beyond the current governor’s tenure.

This isn’t about partisan politics — it’s about institutional capture masquerading as presidential search. When a university’s governance becomes an extension of political patronage rather than academic stewardship, the institution trades its birthright for a mess of pottage. It's clear that the credibility and autonomy that took generations to build can be compromised in a single Board meeting.

What Makes This Even Worse: FAMU Already Had a Performance Framework

What makes this governance backslide even more alarming is that FAMU had previously developed — and used — a Board-approved evaluation framework for presidential performance. In 2022-23, President Robinson was evaluated by trustees across specific, quantifiable goals, including:

Graduation Rates: Increasing 4-year graduation to 38%.

Second-Year Retention: Target of 90%.

Licensure Pass Rates: Nursing (85%), Law (80%), Pharmacy (90%), Physical Therapy (88%).

Fundraising: Annual giving goal of $15 million; alumni giving target of 9%.

R&D Expenditures: Goal of $45 million.

Organizational Leadership: Strategy execution, leadership development, succession, and accountability.

Fiscal Management: Debt coverage ratio and strategic resource allocation alignment.

Performance-Based Funding Metrics: Tied to Florida SUS funding models.

Clearly, this was not theoretical—the trustees used these actual numbers to assess presidential performance as quantitative targets were embedded in the evaluation tool approved by the Board itself. The problem is not that FAMU doesn’t know how to do this, the problem is that the Board chose not to apply this standard to the incoming appointment.

Rather than strengthen the institution’s governance scaffolding, the Board chose to dismantle a system that was already producing structured, transparent evaluation data. The new contract abandons that rigor and returns to vague “goals” language untethered to enforceable outcomes. In essence, this is governance malpractice hiding in plain sight!

Five Principles of Institutional Stewardship — None Present Here

The governance failures embedded in this contract aren’t inevitable, as serious institutions have adopted accountability structures that actually protect institutional interests. Consider what responsible governance looks like:

Performance-Weighted Compensation — Pay depends on achieving specific outcomes, not simply occupying the office.

Quantifiable Metrics — Clear benchmarks tied directly to enrollment, retention, fundraising, and academic reputation.

Earned Tenure Eligibility — Faculty appointments based on academic record, not executive service.

Foundation Risk Limits — Boards that prevent commitments beyond sustainable levels, protecting donor resources.

Autonomy Protections — Contract provisions that safeguard institutional independence from political interference.

I call this approach the Institutional Stewardship Model (ISM) — governance structures designed to serve the institution rather than the appointee. But the gap between responsible governance and what FAMU just approved isn’t academic theory— it’s the difference between protecting an institution and exploiting it, and between leadership that builds and leadership that extracts!

The Foundation Board Should Be Asking Hard Questions

The FAMU Foundation Board needs to be absolutely clear in letting folks know what they are being asked to underwrite, as nearly half a million dollars per year for five years represents a massive commitment that directly competes with funding for scholarships, faculty support, and academic programs.

Foundation boards exist to steward donor resources for institutional benefit, not to enable politically motivated appointments that may or may not serve FAMU’s interests.

But in this instance, where is the due diligence? Where is the risk assessment? Where is the backbone?

This Is About FAMU’s Future, Not One Contract

What we’re witnessing isn’t just a problematic hire — it’s a pattern of governance decay that threatens FAMU’s long-term viability!

The slow erosion of institutional standards doesn’t announce itself with fanfare; it arrives through a thousand small compromises that seem reasonable in isolation but prove corrosive in accumulation:

Rising fixed costs without corresponding accountability mechanisms.

Foundation resources being diverted to finance political appointments.

Weak institutional protections against financial mismanagement and autonomy erosion.

It is critical to remember that presidential contracts aren’t administrative paperwork — they’re institutional DNA! They embed either resilience or vulnerability into the university’s future. They tell us whether we’re serious about stewardship or content with speculation.

If FAMU stakeholders are serious about protecting this institution’s mission and credibility, we need to demand governance standards worthy of a leading HBCU. That means choosing accountability over acquiescence, transparency over convenience, and institutional stewardship over political theater.

When it comes to Marva Johnson’s proposed contract, the Board of Trustees just mortgaged FAMU’s financial future to make a political appointment. The question now is whether anyone with the power to change course will have the courage to choose Spartan discipline over the serpentine whisper?

***Clarification: Trustee Belvin Perry, Jr. was the only DeSantis appointee who did not vote for Johnson. His term, the shortest of all Trustees, is just over one year in length.