Holifield calls termination of McKnight “a step backwards” for FAMU

Last month former Florida A&M University General Counsel Bishop Holifield called the termination of his successor, Avery McKnight, “a step backwards” for the university.

“That office had such a track record of success it’s hard to understand why anyone would want to undermine the success,” Holifield said when Capital Outlook reporter St. Clair Murraine asked him to comment on McKnight’s exit. “I think it’s a step backwards. I think it would be difficult to find someone more competent and more committed than Avery McKnight.”

Holifield hired McKnight to work in the general counsel’s office in 1992. McKnight then became the new general counsel after Holifield retired in 2002. He later served as an attorney for Allen, Norton and Blue before returning to the FAMU general counsel position in 2007.

FAMU President Elmira Mangum fired McKnight last month. He was placed on administrative leave on December 1 and will remain in that status until his separation from FAMU is final on February 23.

According to Murraine, “Mangum had made her intentions to fire McKnight known in a previous BOT meeting, but the board blocked the move.”

Holifield, a FAMU alumnus who earned his law degree from Harvard in 1969, became FAMU’s first-ever general counsel during the presidency of Benjamin L. Perry, Jr. He helped Perry lead the fight against attempts to merge FAMU with Florida State University.

The termination of McKnight came months after the then-chairman and vice-chairman of the FAMU Board of Trustees (BOT) had asked him to look into the shift of the $12,996,539 core operating budget of the College of Engineering (COE) from FAMU to FSU. Back at an August 5 BOT committee meeting, then-Chairman Rufus Montgomery and Vice-Chairman Kelvin Lawson challenged Mangum’s claim that the money shift made by a vote of the Joint College of Engineering Governance Council on May 20 was a “management decision.”

Lawson said that “Section 3: Comprehensive Standards” of the SACS rules could give the BOT a way to challenge what the Joint Council did.  “Section 3” includes a rule that says the policy-making job of the board of a school must remain distinct from the job of the administration to oversee the execution of policies.

At the August 5 meeting, Lawson and the chairman asked a number of FAMU offices, including the Office of the General Counsel, to look into the issue.

“I feel like FAMU suffered a loss,” Holifield told the Capital Outlook. “It takes years to gain the experience necessary to be an effective general counsel. You just don’t walk in off the street and operate as an effective general counsel…That’s especially the case at a HBCU because, not only do you have all the consideration that any general counsel would have, but you have to figure out how can you help your institution survive at a time when HBCU’s are under attack.”