Andrew MarraPalm Beach Post
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When Florida Atlantic University’s board of trustees meets in person, it does so in a chamber dedicated a decade ago as the “Dr. Jeffrey P. & Barbara S. Feingold Board of Trustees Room.”
It’s a point that Barbara Feingold — the board’s vice chairperson, a philanthropist and a prominent Republican donor — is quick to point out to her colleagues.
“The board room has our name on it,” she told them in August, “from our commitment going back a number of years ago.”
Her fellow trustees surely need no reminding. Feinstein’s largesse and single-minded drive have been a primary force behind big changes at the school lately — and, critics claim, big problems.
In less than a year, Feingold managed to push through plans for FAU to create a dentistry college, a remarkable coordination of multiple bureaucracies that included repeated waivers of their normal procedures. If and when it opens, it will be just the second public dental school in Florida.
But in recent months, Feingold has become better known for her role in what has become the defining issue at the school of late: the controversial stalled search for a new president.
FAU’s worst-kept secret is the behind-the-scenes battle over whether the presidency should go to a traditional university administrator or to state Rep. Randy Fine, a conservative firebrand from the Space Coast.
Feingold, a friend and benefactor of Fine, has played a headline-grabbing role, one that now has become intertwined with the dental school project she made one of her chief goals.
More: With presidential search delayed, FAU faculty proposes offering the job to the interim
Feingold fortune made from dental company
Feingold and her late husband, Jeffrey, both longtime Delray Beach residents, became involved in FAU affairs after making a fortune building MCNA Dental, a dental benefits administrator that serves Medicaid patients.
In addition to philanthropic work, they made extensive donations to Republican politicians in Florida and around the country, developing close ties with many influential leaders.
The couple chaired Ron DeSantis’ first overseas trip as governor, to Israel. Jeffrey counted prominent Republicans such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy among his friends.
Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist appointed Jeffrey to FAU’s board of trustees in 2010. The following year, Gov. Rick Scott appointed Barbara to the state Board of Education, which oversees educational policy for Florida’s public schools.
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DeSantis spoke at Jeffrey Feingold's funeral
When Jeffrey died in 2021, DeSantis delivered the eulogy at his funeral. That same year, he appointed Barbara, who in 2021 donated $85,000 to his political action committee, to fill her husband’s seat.
“Jeffrey had been asking about a dental school for quite some time,” recalled Dennis Crudele, FAU’s former senior vice president for financial affairs and interim president. “I thought a dental school might take away valuable resources.”
When Barbara replaced her husband on the board of trustees, she vowed to fulfill her husband’s vision, acquaintances say.
Jeffrey had spent years trying to persuade the university to establish a dental college, only to be rebuffed by administrators who viewed it as a costly distraction.
She succeeded in short order. Within two years of her appointment, the school and the state Board of Governors had approved plans to build Florida’s second public dental school, buoyed by a promised $30 million donation by Feingold.
She and FAU succeeded where others had failed. Two other universities, the University of Central Florida and Florida A&M University, had tried unsuccessfully in the 2010s to win state support for dental schools.
In addition to her donation, Feingold pushed the project forward through strength of will, university officials said. She set up meetings with key state lawmakers. She pressed school administrators and state bureaucrats to speed up normally deliberative approval processes.
Process to launch College of Dentistry took six months, not 36
“Barbara is a very strategic-minded person and will stop at nothing to get what she wants," said one person who has worked with her and requested anonymity to speak candidly.
FAU Professor William Trapani recalled that at the request of university administrators, faculty committees involved in the approval process “voted to suspend our procedures, we accelerated our review periods, and we burned the midnight oil to help get this proposal passed.”
“That College of Dentistry went from conception to approval in less than six months,” he said. “This was an entire state effort to achieve a college in six months that would normally take 36 months.”
Randy Fine part of approving dentistry school money
The state Board of Governors, which oversees Florida’s public universities and colleges, also stretched its deadlines to allow the project to proceed quickly.
When it came time to request money from the state, university records show state officials “allowed Florida Atlantic to submit this (legislative budget request) beyond the original submission deadline because of the nature of the internal approval processes.”
The Legislature this spring approved $40 million to begin developing the school. Serving on the powerful House appropriations committee that approved the money in the state budget: Rep. Fine.
Money and approvals were flowing fast, and architectural renderings of the dental college facility were drawn up. The building façade read: “Dr. Jeffrey P. Feingold College of Dentistry.”
Insiders say Feingold’s ability to get the dental school through was enabled by the retirement of FAU President John Kelly, who for years had resisted Jeffrey’s entreaties.
His departure also set the stage for the current presidential search crisis.
When the trustees began selecting a new president, Feingold joined the search committee. Normally a staid process, the search was jolted in March by Fine’s announcement that he had been approached by DeSantis about taking the position.
More: State asks attorney general to weigh in on FAU’s stalled presidential search
Randy Fine's involvement made FAU's presidential search explosive
The possibility that Fine, a combative firebrand politician and former gambling executive, could win the helm of a state university alarmed many university employees and alumni.
Fine has a history of inflammatory comments and threats. He stoked controversy this year by stating that if it requires "erasing a community" — referring to the LGBTQ+ people — to protect children then "damn right, we ought to do it."
Also this year, a state ethics panel found probable cause that he abused his position as a state lawmaker by threatening West Melbourne's funding for the Special Olympics. No final determination on the case has been made by the state ethics commission, according to Florida Today.
Worried faculty seemed to breathe easy in July when the search committee announced three finalists for the job and Fine was not among them.
But just two days after the announcement, state university system officials intervened, halting the search while, they said, they looked into potential rule violations by the committee and its search firm.
The potential violations: the search committee's use of a "straw poll" to develop consensus about which candidates to consider and questions about gender and sexuality that were included on a questionnaire that the private search firm asked candidates to complete.
The trustees' chairman has defended their practices as in line with other recent presidential searches that did not generate controversy.
Three months later, the search remains on hold, leaving the school without a permanent leader.
Many faculty members and alumni believe the stated concerns are just pretext. The real source of dissatisfaction, they say, is the fact that Fine was not named among the finalists.
The search committee’s deliberations are confidential. But Feingold, who sits on the search committee, is widely seen as an advocate for Fine’s candidacy.
More: With presidential search delayed, FAU faculty proposes offering the job to the interim
Barbara Feingold donated $10,000 to Fine's campaigns
She donated $10,000 to his political action committee last year, and Fine told FAU’s student newspaper that they are “close friends” who met through the Republican Jewish Coalition, a national political organization. He did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.
Feingold has not indicated her personal preference publicly. She did not respond to interview requests for this story made through FAU's media affairs office and social media.
But her dissatisfaction with the results of the search spilled into the open at a caustic trustees meeting in August.
Calling into the virtual meeting from overseas, Feingold revealed during an extended scolding of Board of Trustees Chairperson Brad Levine that she had voted against all three of the finalists.
“When you talk about your wonderful finalists, none of which I voted for — and I'm talking out of turn by saying I didn’t vote for them and I’ll tell you the reason why.”
She went on to say that some of the finalists had "ethics violations" and that one was pushed out of a previous job.
Her disclosure may have violated a confidentiality and guiding principles agreement that she and other members of the search committee had signed, one in which they agreed to “maintain the absolute confidentiality of all prospects and applicants.”
“I will not reveal the name of or any information about any prospects or applicants before or after the Committee completes its work,” the agreement states.
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Feingold blasts FAU board chair Brad Levine
Her comments came during a series of extraordinary tirades against Levine, who she criticized for writing an op-ed column defending the integrity of the search process.
“I am really angry,” she said, adding “I resent the fact that you’ve been talking for all of us.”
Later in the meeting, the discussion pivoted to the future of the dentistry school, and another blow-up ensued.
Levine said that state officials had asked about the status of Feingold’s promised $30 million donation, which had been proffered last year.
But it turned out Feingold had never formalized or committed her donation to writing, despite the fact that university officials had already included her late husband’s name on renderings of the school, a move that one university official called “highly unusual.”
Feingold blasted Levine for asking about her donation, saying it was out of place for him to question her.
“I don’t think it's appropriate for you to speak to it,” she said. “You haven’t made that kind of donation. You haven’t made any commitment.”
She went on to remind Levine that she had not yet committed to making the donation, saying that “nothing has been signed.”
“I’m one of those donors that is concerned about that presidential process,” she said.
“That will happen when this is all resolved,” she continued. “There’s nothing in writing and there won’t be.”
When Levine asked whether Feingold preferred that the dentistry school project be placed on pause until the presidential search is complete, she lashed out again, accusing him of making the suggestion “out of spite.”
“If you want to hold off on the College of Dentistry, if you want to do this out of spite to me or my husband or to the state of Florida … if that’s what you’re trying to achieve and you think you can win with that, then do it,” she said.
In a statement, FAU spokesman Joshua Glanzer said the school is moving forward with plans for the college, including recruiting an acting dean. The school is tentatively slated to open in 2026.
But he said that the project remains unfinished as all of the necessary financing has not been secured.
“No project is complete until fully funded, and funding can come from multiple sources,” he said.
Feingold’s extraordinary tongue-lashing generated headlines across the state. It prompted articles in Boca Raton Magazine and FAU’s student newspaper, the University Press, exploring whether she had violated her confidentiality and guiding principles agreement or the school’s conflict-of-interest rules.
It also led several other trustees to bemoan the lack of civility in the board room.
Feingold did not attend the next board meeting. But she was not far from trustees’ minds.
Rules changed, keep Feingold out of automatically leading the board
They ended a virtual meeting in September by changing their rules for who replaces the chairperson in the event of resignation or removal.
Under the rules at the time, the vice chairperson — meaning Feingold — would have become the trustees’ new leader if Levine were to depart.
But an overwhelming majority decided that, instead of granting the role to Feingold, the trustees would vote to pick a new leader themselves.
The change was approved overwhelmingly.
amarra@pbpost.com
