Are you certain of your facts? I was there at the time, and Betty Castor bent over backwards to get rid of Al Arian in a legal manner to avoid his coming back and winning on appeal. I don't necessarily like her, but she didn't do anything wrong in the Al Arian instance. And subsequent court events proved her right. The first trial results which did not find him guilty are what resulted in his plea bargain to avoid another trial with a possible conviction. Castor's efforts to get rid of him were thwarted at almost every turn. The end result is that he's no longer teaching at USF, and that was the extent of her authority to make happen. She succeeded.
Not the way I heard it.
I heard she had tried to stop his ouster.