Former vice provost settles with PSU for $795K

Former Portland State Vice Provost of Student Affairs Dr. Douglas Samuels has reached a $795,000 settlement with the university in a racial discrimination lawsuit he filed in September 2007.

In a statement, Samuels said he was “subject to inequitable treatment in terms of pay, committee assignments and job responsibilities during his four-year tenure” at Portland State.

At a press conference Friday morning, Samuels specifically cited not receiving committee assignments, his pay scale not being equal to administrators in lateral positions and not having the ability to manage his staff with autonomy as his primary reasons for filing the discrimination suit.

Samuels hopes that now that a settlement has been reached he can resume working as a college administrator somewhere in the United States, however, he worries about negative implications of the lawsuit against Portland State being made public.

“Not being active in something that I enjoy doing—I miss that a great deal. I was a mobile administrator. I wasn’t a desk jockey,” Samuels said. “Unfortunately, this lawsuit has cast a cloud over my reputation.”

After being hired in a national search, Samuels served as the vice provost of student affairs from 2001 to 2005, but was stripped of his administrative post in fall 2005 and demoted to a position as a professor in the Black Studies department.

Samuels resigned from his professor position in the Black Studies department and left the university in January 2006.

Samuels said that while he was working as the vice provost of student affairs he experienced difficulties managing his department and implementing changes that were called for in former President Daniel O. Bernstine’s Campus Climate Study, which was put in place to in part address the university’s lack of diversity.

When he arrived at Portland State in 2001, Samuels said that there were no persons of color in senior administrative positions outside of Bernstine and the dean of social work.

Samuels said the settlement was reached in late December 2008 or early January 2009.

Scott Gallagher, director of communications at Portland State, issued the following statement as the university’s official comment on the situation:

“The Oregon Department of Justice, not Portland State University, handles cases like this. The Oregon Department of Administrative Services advised settlement on this case, and neither party has admitted wrongdoing.”