NAU ethnic studies professor who filed discrimination lawsuit reaches settlement, resigns, moves on

Daniel Gonzalez, Arizona Republic
·4 min read
Ricardo Guthrie, a tenured professor in the Ethnic Studies program at Northern Arizona University, says racial bias and systemic discrimination at NAU has resulted in the continued lack of recruitment, hiring, promotion ad retention of qualified Black faculty at the university in Flagstaff.
Ricardo Guthrie, a tenured professor in the Ethnic Studies program at Northern Arizona University, says racial bias and systemic discrimination at NAU has resulted in the continued lack of recruitment, hiring, promotion ad retention of qualified Black faculty at the university in Flagstaff.
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A former Northern Arizona University professor has settled a racial discrimination lawsuit filed in 2022 against NAU officials and the Arizona Board of Regents.

Ricardo Guthrie, a tenured professor who pioneered NAU's Ethnic Studies program, settled the lawsuit in June and resigned from his position on July 1. Guthrie is now teaching at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville.

“Dr. Guthrie voluntarily resigned his employment with NAU and the matter has been resolved," Kimberly Ott, NAU associate vice president of communications, said in a written statement.

In an interview, Guthrie said he was prohibited from discussing the details of the settlement with NAU and the Arizona Board of Regents. He disclosed that he had reached a settlement to The Arizona Republic this month after an inquiry.

Guthrie was the subject of a profile published by The Arizona Republic in August 2021 in which he described in detail his complaints that structural racism had prevented Black professors and other professors of color from being recruited, hired, promoted and retained at NAU, the state's third-largest public university.

Northern Arizona University Ethnic Studies professor Ricardo Guthrie recently published an open letter airing his complaints about the lack of racial and ethnic minority faculty at NAU at a time when the student body has become increasing diverse.
Northern Arizona University Ethnic Studies professor Ricardo Guthrie recently published an open letter airing his complaints about the lack of racial and ethnic minority faculty at NAU at a time when the student body has become increasing diverse.

In January 2022, Guthrie filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging he was not allowed to retain a department chair position after he raised complaints about discrimination against Black faculty members at the university.

Guthrie was hired as an assistant professor in 2008 to build the fledgling Ethnic Studies program. The program is intended to offer an alternative to a Eurocentrically biased curriculum through courses that focus on the history and cultural contributions of racially marginalized groups in America, namely Blacks, Native Americans, Latinos and Asians.

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Guthrie later was granted tenure as an associate professor based in part on his work leading an oral history research project of Flagstaff's deeply rooted but little known African American population. The projected culminated in a mural painted on the side of the Murdoch Center, housed in the former Dunbar School, a school for Black children during segregation.

The mural depicts Flagstaff's segregated past, and highlights the history and contributions of the city's Black pioneers, many of whom fled the Jim Crow South to work in the city's sawmill and railroad industries.

In 2016, Guthrie was appointed to chair the Ethnic Studies program, an academic unit that fell under the university's College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Ricardo Guthrie, a tenured professor in the Ethnic Studies program at Northern Arizona University, inside the Murdoch Center on the southside of Flagstaff. The center sits on the site of the former Dunbar School, which until the 1950s was a segregated school for African American students. Guthrie has fought to increase the number of Black faculty at NAU.

In his lawsuit, Guthrie alleged that he was not allowed to pursue a second four-year term as chair/director of the Ethnic Studies program after raising complaints about the discrimination he said he witnessed at NAU and filing complaints with the university's Equal Access Office.

The Arizona Board of Regents denied in court papers that Guthrie was discriminated against because of his race. In court documents asking for Guthrie's lawsuit to be dismissed, the board called the lawsuit "fatally flawed in several material respects," chief among them that Guthrie failed to comply with legal requirements under the Civil Rights Act when filing the lawsuit.

Guthrie's lawsuit noted that the white to non-white faculty ratio at NAU has remained 4:1. Out of approximately 1,100 faculty members, less than 20% are non-white, about 79% are white, and 1.6% are Black, a ratio of nearly 50:1, the lawsuit stated.

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NAU's student population has become increasingly diverse. At the time the lawsuit was filed, about 42% of NAU students identified as people of color, including 25% Latino, 6% African-American, 6% Asian and 5% Native American.

Guthrie said he began in August his new position at Fisk University, where he is the distinguished professor of social justice teaching graduate students. Guthrie said he is helping develop the newly created John Lewis Center for Social Justice at Fisk. The center is named after the late John Lewis, a civil rights icon and former U.S. Congress member who died in 2020. Lewis was a graduate of Fisk.

Northern Arizona University Ethnic Studies professor Ricardo Guthrie submitted the mural project as part of his portfolio of published work when he applied for tenure, which he received in 2014.
Northern Arizona University Ethnic Studies professor Ricardo Guthrie submitted the mural project as part of his portfolio of published work when he applied for tenure, which he received in 2014.

His grandfather attended Fisk University in the 1920s, Guthrie said, making his appointment there in that way a "homecoming."

Guthrie said in 2022 he was awarded as co-director a nearly $190,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct two one-week workshops in the summer of 2023 for K-12 educators to learn about the history of indigenous, Black and Hispanic people along Route 66, a historic highway that runs through Flagstaff and crosses more than two dozen sovereign indigenous nations.

Guthrie said he was notified of the grant's approval in August, but he was notified in January by NAU that his request for payment was cancelled. As co-director of the project, Guthrie said he was entitled to receive pay for two months of work overseeing the program plus the two one-week Route 66 workshops. He said he is taking legal action to receive the payment.

In a statement, Ott, the NAU spokesperson, said, “NAU pays its approved vendors in a timely manner.”

Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Former NAU professor resigns after settling discrimination lawsuit