The Albuquerque chapter of the NAACP filed a complaint with the Justice Department and the Department of Education claiming UNM is biased against African-Americans.
The New York Times reported Tuesday the Title IV says University and UNMH administrators created a racially hostile environment for black faculty, staff and students.
The complaint says African-Americans have been excluded from upper administration positions, African-American women have no authority within UNM and that African-American faculty face salary disparities.
The complaint also says the majority of African-American doctors who left UNMH over the past decade, did so because of workplace discrimination.
UNM president David Schmidly, and the Health Sciences Center’s chancellor, Paul Roth, denied the claims of discrimination in a joint statement issued Tuesday.
“We do not discriminate against African-Americans. We do not discriminate against any individual or group based on race, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender or ability,” the statement said. “The university has very clear policies in place which prohibit discrimination and we train our employees to comply with the law and our policies.”
Look for continuing coverage of this issue in the Daily Lobo.
