Hours before the chancellor of Florida’s state university system effectively suspended Florida Atlantic University’s presidential search last summer, he heard from a displeased Republican state representative who’d been passed over for the job.
On July 5, the university announced its three finalists. Randy Fine, a political firebrand and former gambling industry executive who’d applied for the presidency, was not one of them. When Fine heard the news, he was mad — not because he wanted the gig, but because he’d wasted his time, he told The Chronicle in a recent interview. According to Fine, someone from the governor’s office contacted him in mid-February about the job. He said he was “pitched” on it for about a month by multiple people on the governor’s staff whom he would not name, then assured throughout the search process that he was the guy.
“I was told if I said I would do it, it would happen,” Fine said. “I never agreed to compete for the job.” In fact, Fine said, he was “explicit” that he had no interest in competing, because he’d never get picked in a traditional presidential search, as he’s not an academic.
Two days after the finalists were announced, Fine emailed Raymond Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, and described problems with how the search was run. “To my dismay, over the past several months, I have learned that while woke may go to die in Florida, it is alive and well in our Universities,” the legislator wrote, according to an email The Chronicle obtained through a public-records request of the university system. (The email’s sender and some of its content were redacted, but Fine confirmed to The Chronicle that he sent the message.)
Over all, Fine found the search process to be “extremely troubling,” he wrote. He listed a few reasons why, including that he was asked “whether I was a ‘male’ or a ‘transgender male’” on a questionnaire. “Seems even the woke left doesn’t believe their nonsense about gender being purely self-selected; nonetheless, the question was extremely inappropriate, if not illegal,” Fine wrote.
Later that day, Rodrigues sent a letter to the presidential-search committee’s chair that included some of Fine’s complaints, though he did not name the representative, as well as alleged problems with a straw poll taken during the search. Due to “the serious nature of these concerns,” Rodrigues wrote, he recommended the search be suspended. It was. An investigation ensued, as did squabbling between FAU board members. Eventually, the university was told to redo its presidential search, but things are reportedly stalled.
The investigative report into the matter says that someone complained to Rodrigues about “potentially inappropriate interactions between the search firm and applicants,” but it does not name the individual. Fine’s role as the complainant and the contents of his email have not previously been reported. The development sheds some light on a tumultuous presidential search that has been tainted by allegations of political tampering and was ultimately determined to have violated state law.
‘The Most Bizarre Job Interview’ Ever
Fine was one of 65 people who applied to be Florida Atlantic’s next president. He maintains he never would have been interested if the governor’s office hadn’t come calling.
“I wasn’t looking for a job, let alone a university president,” Fine said. “And I know that’s weird for you to hear, because university presidents are very prestigious and they make a lot of money. But I did that. I was a very successful entrepreneur for 22 years. I like being in the legislature. I like hanging out with my kids. I don’t want to move.”
In March, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that the lawmaker was eyeing the role. A spokesperson for Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, said at the time, “We think he’d be a good candidate.” Fine was a known DeSantis ally. The news outlet Florida Politics has described Fine as the governor’s “lead culture warrior on the House floor.”
But early in the process, it became clear to Fine that “the situation was not as advertised,” he told The Chronicle. Several problems emerged for him. In his email to Rodrigues, Fine took issue with a questionnaire he’d received from AGB Search, the firm assisting FAU in finding its next president. According to Fine, that questionnaire, in addition to asking about Fine’s gender, “also asked me whether my sexual preference was ‘queer’ — the only thing queer about it being the judgement [sic] of those asking it,” he wrote to Rodrigues.
Then, in June, Fine said he was “directed to complete a survey in which I was asked for my personal pronouns and forced to answer whether my gender was ‘other,’” he told the chancellor. Those questions “were simply wrong.”
AGB Search has defended its diversity questionnaire as routine and voluntary. The other survey that Fine referenced is a consent form used by a background-check company that was sent to semifinalists. The form is required, but the part that asks for someone’s pronouns is optional and clearly labeled, the search firm has said.
Fine also criticized the actions of Bradley M. Levine, who at the time was chair of FAU’s Board of Trustees and its presidential-search committee. During his interview before the committee, Fine wrote to the chancellor, Levine “ordered” his fellow members “to remain silent and forbid them from asking me questions about my background or qualifications as he, and only he, read his hand-selected questions.” Fine wrote that he was “appalled by the disrespect with which Chair Levine treated members of his committee.”
In his interview with The Chronicle, Fine placed the blame for his failed candidacy on Levine. Fine said he met with Levine before he applied, and it “seemed pretty clear that he understood things, and I think that he was telling the governor’s office the same.” But that was before Fine walked into what he called “the most bizarre job interview that’s ever been conducted in the history of the world.”
During that interview, Fine said, Levine’s questions would have been appropriate if the committee was looking for a “traditional, liberal, career academic. … But the idea, I had been told, is: ‘We want somebody new. We want someone from outside the system. We want someone to revisit whether we should have gender studies’ — all that kind of crazy woke stuff that we see in higher education. So the questions were obviously designed not for anyone like me.”
Levine declined to comment on Fine specifically-. (In 2022, Florida passed a law that shields the identities of applicants for public-college presidencies until the final stages.) But Levine told The Chronicle that the committee had a set of standard questions it asked each candidate who was interviewed, and everyone was given the same amount of time to reply. After those standard queries were asked, he said, committee members could pose their own questions.
“We showed incredible respect to every candidate,” Levine said.
Levine denied that he ordered anyone to remain silent or forbade committee members from asking questions. “We encouraged all search members to ask all the questions they possibly had,” he said. The process was “exactly the same for every single candidate.”
Anonymous Straw Poll Questioned
Hours after receiving Fine’s July 7 email, Rodrigues informed Levine in a letter that his office had been told about certain “anomalies” in the search process, including the questionnaire and the other form that Fine had flagged. The chancellor noted that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said that “questions about an applicant’s sex including sexual orientation, [and] gender identity ... are generally viewed as not job-related and problematic under Title VII unless a defense or exception applies.”
Fine said he has “no idea” how much his opinion influenced Rodrigues. He said he contacted the chancellor because he’d gotten “to go behind enemy lines, and I thought they should know just how bad things were.” He said he’d also voiced his concerns to the governor’s office.
By the time Fine sent his email, Rodrigues already knew about another issue with the search: the use of an anonymous straw poll. In May, committee members were asked to rank their top six from a list of candidates and submit their choices to AGB Search, which aggregated the results. According to the investigative report, the chancellor started hearing concerns about the way in which candidates were being narrowed down on June 30. (That timeline is reflected in the public records received by The Chronicle. On that day, FAU’s general counsel and the university system’s general counsel exchanged emails about the legality of conducting another such poll at a forthcoming meeting.)
In his July 7 letter, Rodrigues told Levine that “holding a straw poll, that is tantamount to a written vote that is not disclosed, may run afoul” of state law.
After the search was suspended, observers of Florida higher ed speculated that Fine’s absence among the finalists prompted the chancellor to intervene. (In response to an emailed request for comment, a university system spokesperson sent a short statement, saying that Rodrigues had “received concerns” about the search and acted upon them.) Richard Schmidt, a search committee member, said as much in an opinion essay published in multiple Florida news outlets. “I feel personally outraged and slandered by the implications of the chancellor’s letter on me and my colleagues,” Schmidt wrote, “for what appears to be an attempt to unwind our successful, hard work and reopen a search for a candidate more to the liking of certain politicians.”
Julie Leftheris, the university system’s inspector general, was tapped to investigate the search process, and she touched on Schmidt’s essay in her office’s report, which was made public in December. Her office ultimately found that Schmidt, Levine, FAU’s general counsel, and its vice president for public affairs had all acted “contrary to the nondisclosure agreement” they had signed because of their involvement with the op-ed.
Leftheris’s office also concluded that the anonymous straw poll was “improperly administered” and violated state law, citing a legal opinion issued in October by the state’s attorney general.
As for the consent form, the review led by Leftheris did not find “any legal grounds” that would bar the background-check company from including an optional field for personal pronouns. The report took issue with how AGB Search presented the diversity questionnaire to candidates but confirmed that answers to it “were not associated with any individual applicant for employment decision-making purposes.”
The report also concluded that there was “insufficient evidence” to support the claim that FAU was “directed or pressured to advance or select any specific candidate.” It noted that Levine “opined there were some political dealings regarding the FAU presidential search and stated Board of Governors member Tim Cerio verbally told him, ‘It was very important to make sure [a specific candidate] moves forward.’”
When interviewed during the investigation, Cerio remembered discussing with Levine “an individual who had been highlighted by the media as being a potential candidate,” according to the report. Cerio said he told Levine he “thought the individual would make a good candidate,” it said. “However, he did not, nor was he in a position to, instruct Chair Brad Levine that the individual must be moved forward.”
Leftheris’s office found other problems with the search and recommended FAU start over. Her office also questioned whether Levine should chair the next presidential-search committee, given “his involvement and oversight of the search process assessed by this investigative review.”
In January, the Board of Governors, the governing body of Florida’s public universities, voted no confidence in Levine, and on Thursday he resigned as chair of Florida Atlantic’s board. He remains as a trustee. “Leadership is knowing what’s in the best interests of the university and more specifically, what’s in the best interests of the students to move the institution forward,” Levine told The Chronicle. The search itself remains in limbo.
As for Fine, if the governor’s office asked him to pursue a presidency at a different Florida university, would he consider it?
No, he told The Chronicle. For one thing, “I wouldn’t believe it again,” he said. For another, they probably wouldn’t ask him again.
Since last spring, a rift opened between the lawmaker and the governor. In October, Fine, who is the sole Jewish Republican in the state’s legislature, flipped his presidential endorsement to Donald Trump, arguing that DeSantis has fallen short on combating antisemitism, particularly in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel.
That same week, an unnamed senior official “close” to DeSantis told Politico that actually Fine and “multiple intermediaries went to the governor’s office begging to get him the FAU job,” not the other way around.
That’s a lie, Fine said. What really happened was “they recruited me, and then they couldn’t deliver.”