Category: Politics

Many in the Florida A&M community don’t believe that Marva Johnson has the experience needed to lead the storied institution

By Brandon Tensley, Aallyah Wright and Ja’Caiya Y. Stephens | May 16, 2025

The Florida A&M University Board of Trustees on Friday picked Marva Johnson as the school’s 13th president in an 8-4 vote. Her selection is subject to confirmation by the 17-member Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s public university system.

This decision comes as a blow to many students and alumni. Over the past week, they mounted fierce opposition to Johnson’s candidacy, arguing that the current group vice president of state government affairs at Charter Communications lacks the experience needed to lead the state’s flagship historically Black school.

These tensions bubbled over at a moment when other HBCUs across the South are struggling to find leadership that enjoys the confidence of their respective communities.

“We shouldn’t be seen as a training ground for someone who doesn’t have any academic experience,” Gregg Bishop, who takes pride in his alma mater, told Capital B. “Yes, she may have business experience, but for us, it’s academics first.”

Johnson hasn’t responded to Capital B’s request for comment.

FAMU stands out as the first HBCU to offer its students a nationally accredited journalism program. The school is also one of the top producers of Black graduates with doctoral degrees in science and engineering and sits in the top five of the Black land-grant universities that generate the most annual economic impact for their graduates. FAMU has been the highest-ranked public HBCU for six consecutive years.

From its academic rigor to its campus culture, FAMU is “unmatched,” Bishop added. Plus, the school accepted him — a former college dropout with a 1.9 grade point average. After working in the tech industry for seven years, he returned to college, graduating from FAMU in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

“I have a special love for FAMU because FAMU gave me the opportunity to get my bachelor’s degree. Then, I went to Florida State University and got my master’s degree. Because of that, I was able to have over a decade-long career in government in New York City,” said Bishop, a member of FAMU’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication Board of Visitors.

An ally of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Johnson was one of four people in the running to be the university’s next leader.

While some worry that she’ll push DeSantis’ anti-diversity agenda, the biggest concern, according to Bishop, is that she won’t last long in the position, a situation that would only fuel instability. The university’s next president, he argued, ought to be selected based not on political ties but on commitment to the FAMU community.

The three other people who were being considered were Donald Palm, FAMU’s executive vice president and chief operating officer; Gerald Hector, the University of Central Florida’s senior vice president for administration and finance; and Rondall Allen, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s provost and vice president for academic affairs.

FAMU’s National Alumni Association endorsed Palm as its preferred candidate.

Students and alumni were speaking out because they wanted to make sure that the people in charge of hiring think long and hard about protecting the university’s future, Erica Stallworth, a 2002 FAMU graduate, told Capital B.

“I’m a second-generation HBCU graduate, and I’m proud to be a Rattler,” she said, referring to the school’s mascot. “We need someone who understands — and wants to understand — our culture.”

“More than just a school”

Others in the FAMU community share Bishop and Stallworth’s concerns.

Elijah Hooks, a political science major, started a petition that’s received more than 12,000 signatures. The document describes Johnson, because of her ties to DeSantis, as someone who is out of step with a school that values “teaching our full history” and who would be “learning on the job.”

“To me, FAMU represents the epitome of Black excellence,” Hooks, the co-chair of the grassroots coalition FAMU Deserves Better, told Capital B. “It’s a place where we cultivate Black leaders across every field — from health and engineering, to politics and the arts.”

For Hooks and many of his peers, having a president who embodies these ideals is non-negotiable. The person in this role is “more than a figurehead,” he said — they also “set the tone” for the rest of the school.

Though Johnson previously served on the Florida State Board of Education, her experience is rooted in K-12 policy and corporate governance. She also was an elector for Donald Trump in 2020, and has been appointed to several state positions by Republican governors.

Like Bishop, Stallworth, and Hooks, Hannah Kirby, a broadcast journalism major, believes that the next FAMU president should be someone who understands student life at the university, which she calls her “dream school.”

“Undergraduate students are the heart and soul of this campus,” she told Capital B. “If the president doesn’t understand or support students, that’s a recipe for disaster.”

After attending the open forums for the presidential finalists, Kirby said that Johnson’s lack of academic leadership experience stood out to her.

“Going from lobbying to running a university is a huge leap,” she said. “FAMU is more than just a school. It is a cultural institution that shapes communities.”

One of the university’s most famous alumni, the producer Will Packer, also has denounced Johnson. He said in a video he posted on Instagram, “Right this very minute, a group of activist Republicans is trying to put in the highest position of power someone who is solidly and objectively unqualified for it.”

Packer, whose credits include the 2017 movie Girls Trip, posted the video following a roiling town hall last week. FAMU alumni, boosters, and others criticized Johnson as a “political plant” and threw their support behind Palm.

“What we cannot allow is a hostile takeover by someone who is aligned with a party that has loudly and proudly espoused ideologies that attack diversity and diverse institutions, attacked equitable economics, and attacked inclusive principles — the exact pillars that institutions like FAMU were built upon,” Packer, who didn’t respond to Capital B’s request for comment, said in the video.

Alan Levine, the vice chair of the Florida Board of Governors, criticized the backlash to Johnson, calling it “unfair, uninformed, and not helpful to the process.”

“It’s odd to me that an organized effort is underway to target a candidate before she has been given an opportunity to be interviewed by the Board of Trustees in an open forum,” he told the Tallahassee Democrat last week.

“The Board of Trustees should focus on the qualities of their candidates, and decide which candidate they believe they, as a board, will be able to partner with to deliver the results the BOG, legislature, governor, and most importantly, students expect,” Levine added.

A problem beyond Florida

FAMU isn’t the only HBCU scrambling to find qualified leadership.

At the beginning of the month, Marcus Thompson suddenly resigned as the president of Mississippi’s Jackson State University. The school has had nine presidents over the past 15 years, and alumni — and Gov. Tate Reeves — are demanding greater transparency in its search and vetting process.

Meanwhile, in March, Georgia’s Albany State University named Robert Scott as its next president. But this announcement followed a contentious period: Earlier this year, alumni and their supporters collected more than 900 signatures to make clear that they didn’t want Lawrence Drake, who was the university’s interim president, to assume a permanent role. The petitioners argued that Drake, who worked at the Coca-Cola Co. for 21 years, wasn’t qualified.

Together, these developments underscore the wider leadership challenges facing HBCUs.

In a letter, Florida’s state NAACP chapter expressed “profound concern” about Johnson’s being included in the pool of candidates and threatened to “take all appropriate advocacy and legal actions” over the selection process.

Deveron Gibbons, the chair of the presidential search committee, has defended the process and the qualifications of all four candidates.

The committee “has conducted a transparent, inclusive process and identified four exceptional candidates to move forward,” Gibbons, who’s also the vice chair of FAMU’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement. “Each brings a strong record of leadership.”

Bishop wants others to get involved in their alumni associations, donate to their universities, and boost their civic engagement in everything from parent–teacher associations to state politics. 

He predicts that alumni and students will continue to speak out against Johnson.

“She worked in the private sector. She should be the next CEO of a company, not the next CEO of a university,” Bishop said. “What you’re hearing from the alumni community is that to have someone with zero experience shepherd one of the flagship universities of Florida … it’s concerning.”

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