Despite the fact Arizona voters passed Prop. 107 into law in 2010, banning affirmative action in public education, employment and contracting, the University of Arizona (UA) is brazenly defying the will of the voters.
Longtime respected Professor Keiron Bailey, who is white and considered a nationally recognized expert in Geographic Information Science studies and participatory systems, has been battling UA’s DEI leadership for several years. It all began when Bailey raised process and workplace concerns and provided written, concrete and constructive suggestions prior to 2010. In 2015, he suggested UA follow a model of externally-appointed auditors for senior administration reviews, since the administrators held significant power over the employees from whom these evaluations were being requested. He received no response.
In 2017, his wife, who was also working for UA at the time, received a profanity-laden, threatening call in the middle of the night from his dean. “In December 2017 Dr. Bailey’s Dean, Dean Jones, invaded their home by electronic communication at 1am on a Sunday morning as Dr. Bailey and his family were sleeping and he delivered a series of professional and personal threats to his wife Dr. C including threats to terminate her employment, to terminate the employment of co-workers, and to discharge lethal self-harm,” Bailey said in a civil rights complaint he filed against UA.
But after he reported the harassment to university officials, he was retaliated against. Although officials apologized to his wife, he said Jones was allowed to handle the complaint from his wife. He found out in 2019 that “Jones had indulged and encouraged drunken misconduct by students, and that several women staff members were traumatized by his actions in egging on their disruptive and disturbing behavior.” Bailey reported the conduct but received no response.
Bailey was transferred to the College of Education in 2020. He was ejected from a Faculty Senate meeting in 2023 after summarizing the violations experienced, and the locks were changed on his office. He was removed from Faculty Search Committees and described as “problematic,” having a “hidden agenda” and making threats. His wife’s contract was not renewed. He was subjected to multiple office and campus exclusions on the premise of 'threatening communications', one of which were exemplified except for his quote of 34CFR106.71 from required harassment training.
“Between August 2003 and July 2022, and again after May 2023, nobody among the approximately three thousand staff, students, faculty and community members at UA and other universities who engaged with Dr. Bailey during this time alleged to him, or his managers or colleagues, that Dr. Bailey posed a ‘threat,’” Bailey said in his complaint, nor does he have any court record.
Bailey was denied a promotion, and he submitted public records requests for the names and resumes of DEI employees who had received promotions, but was told there weren’t any records. His annual review in 2022 rated him “unsatisfactory” in all categories by Dr. Regina Deil-Amen of the Educational Policy Studies Program (EPSP) in the College of Education, after she degraded the review in multiple categories — against Committee evaluation. After attending a Safety forum, he was stopped by UA police on grounds he was 'unwelcome' by HR, which lacked probable cause or reasonable suspicion as required under state law.
Several of the administrators who took adverse action against him brazenly pushed DEI. Bailey contacted the federal Department of Education, DOJ, FBI and the Arizona Legislature about it, attaching screenshots from the UA website promoting DEI. Numerous colleges and programs boast about their DEI efforts on the website. In 2021, UA bragged about being designated one of the top employers for diversity. UA removed some of its DEI language off its website earlier this year, but plenty remains.
In his email to an Arizona legislator, Bailey said, “[T]he Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, Dr. Andrea Romero, was appointed to discharge this agenda and has been doing so eagerly. She was placed in this job despite the stronger credential of another applicant, a second-generation Indian American male professor, because she was the face and agent of this hidden agenda and he was not.” He was referring to English Professor Matthew Abraham, who was placed on administrative leave and served a dismissal notice last month after objecting to UA’s DEI policies for years.
Bailey alleged that Romero attempted to place her friend Deil-Amen in an Associate Vice Provost position in 2023. He said this post is being “covered up by unlawful denial of public records requests lodged almost a year ago. Dr. Deil-Amen' entire program and history is DEI-focused.” He and several others have been unable to receive records about Deil-Amen’s promotion in response to his public records requests asking for them. Romero claimed to have no knowledge of this post to the Public Records Coordinator despite supervising the EPSP report containing it.
He further accused her, “Dr. Romero again denied me full and equal participation in a teaching seminar by secretly deactivating my Zoom Q and A function while the other 46 participants had no problems interacting and presenting questions. She does this because I call out the DEI hypocrisy.”
Finally, Bailey said former UA “President [Robert] Robbins apologized to Dr. Bailey for the abuses he had endured” in 2023. But earlier that year in May, Bailey was served a notice of dismissal without required cause, using a previous address changed months prior. He appealed and Robbins rescinded the dismissal, appointing Bailey to Research Innovation and Impact. He was placed in the basement of the lab area in BioSci West building with an ant infestation. “When an ant control tech arrived, the first thing he asked Dr. Bailey even before introducing himself was, ‘What did you do to get sent down here?’” Bailey said in his complaint.
The retaliation against Bailey, Abraham and another professor, Daniel Grossenbach, as whistleblowers must stop. The Trump administration needs to conduct an investigation into their mistreatment and DEI, and the Arizona Legislature should look into the violations of Prop. 107.