A 20-year FIU University professor who works with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has been banned from campus since January.
This will be handed over to Professor H. Scott Fingerhat, 62, from a letter from January 21, 2025, and will be notified by interim director and title IX coordinator Jacqueline Moise Gibbs, Fingerhat, referring to what is being done “quickly and effectively.”
“The letter has received multiple reports with credible concerns about ongoing inappropriate sexual misconduct, including but not limited to making statements about student animal genitals, sexual nature, and other statements that could be interpreted as intimidating or retaliatory.”
During the initial review by the Civil Rights Agency, the letter stated that “the petitioner expressed mental distress, anxiety and fear of retaliation.”
Based on its initial review and analysis, the letter stated that the agency found there was basis for establishing administrative leave as an immediate threat to the health, safety or welfare of a university or university community, or as an immediate threat to welfare, arising from allegations of school sexual harassment and violation of sexual misconduct regulations.
The holidays ban Fingerhot, assistant director of the Florida International University trial advocacy program for both the FIU campus, all FIU-owned buildings, and FIU-sponsored events. Other professors taught classes at FIU this semester. His name did not appear in the preliminary list for fall semester classes.
FIU did not elaborate on the charges against Finger Hat in an email from FIU spokeswoman Madeline Baro.
Fingerhat emailed the Miami Herald “doesn’t doubt or hesitate” to answer why he wasn’t teaching classes this semester, but university policies “prevent him from doing so for now.”
Finger Hat: “Institutional Fear” and “America Softening”
However, Fingerhat expressed his feelings in a draft possible answer to the Miami Herald question. The Herald obtained the email through a request for public records.
“Being a school teacher is one of the great blessings in my life,” he wrote, “I actually believe in an arc of fairness and justice, and what’s going on now is more personal and painful and extremely disappointing than you might imagine.”
Fingerhat said he was grateful for the “faith and confidence of those around me, especially my boss,” and closed the following:
“For some reason, what’s going on with me, and for some reason, it serves as a warning that prisoners can get caught up in a system of enforcement of asylum, where institutional fears are prey to today’s cancellation and consumer culture, and becoming soft in America ruins anyone, even at the highest level of education.”
Spend your days with Hayes
Subscribe to our free Stephenly newsletter
Columnist Stephanie Hayes shares thoughts, feelings and interesting business with you every Monday.
You’re all signed up!
Want more free weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.
Check out all options
The former rookie prosecutor returns as training supervisor
Fingerhut has been a Florida bar member since 1989 and began his legal career as an assistant state attorney in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. He left the office in 1992 and later became a criminal defense lawyer, while still being widely detained for being widely respected at the University of Miami School of Law. His 10 years continued for 20 years at FIU.
His current position at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, which he has held since August, also amounts to his education position. As a special advisor to the state attorney, he is being asked to oversee prosecutor training in gatherings of evidence, ethics and trial advocacy.
“Working with our office at Scott is limited to partnering with my senior staff and trainers on a variety of training topics,” a statement from Miami-Dade State Attorney Catherine Fernandez Randle said.
Fingerhut’s task is similar to that scheduled to be performed by Steve Gosney, who was hired last year in the wake of the suspicious prosecutor’s actions. Gosney got a job last summer, but went out two months later, over a fictional book he wrote, including sexual violence.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office hired Finger Hat in the month Gosney left behind.
Fingerhut has chaired numerous expert committees and currently leads the Florida Bar Leadership Academy Committee and the Code & Rules of Evidence Committee. He piled the honor from the Dade County bar for his pro bono work.
A statement from Fernandez Randle said Fingerhat notified her office of his administrative leave from FIU on January 21, the day of the letter.
Fingerhat remains in his position at the State Attorney’s Office.
“As an office working on due process and fair and impartial investigations, we hope that FIU investigations will progress quickly and ensure that all parties are given the opportunity to address all issues in an open and fair manner,” said a statement from Fernandez Randle. “When the process is finished, we will review the findings.”
