A communications professor at the University of Alabama is suing the university for racial and gender discrimination.
Nikita Harris, a former associate professor in the communication studies department, says she lost opportunities, income and eventually her job after receiving a new, white supervisor. She also claims that the way university students rate professors also tends to be unfair to Black faculty.
“This was yet another act of discrimination and retaliation against plaintiff, for no other reason than simply being a Black female who spoke out against discrimination,” she wrote of her eventual termination after the spring 2025 semester.
Harris filed a federal lawsuit in November 2024. In a court filing, the university denied her allegations and asked for the case to be dismissed.
Harris, a Black woman employed at UA since 2016, said her career was initially going well. She earned a promotion in the communications college. She also was the program coordinator for the online Master of Arts program.
In 2022, Darrin Griffin, a white man, became interim chair of her department. Harris said she soon was “abruptly stripped” of her program coordinator title.
“This came as a shock to Dr. Harris, especially because she had helped bring success to the program in terms of student growth and ranking,” the complaint said. She said Griffin could not give a legitimate reason to why she was stripped from duties “she had been excelling at.”
Harris claims that a less qualified white man was given her former program coordinator role.
Harris said she also felt targeted by her gender and race when she was removed from a department’s graduate committee “with no reason or justification.”
“After expressing her concerns of discrimination, Griffin became visibly upset and angry at Dr. Harris and provided no legitimate response to the discriminatory actions he had taken against her,” the complaint said.
Harris claims she was being unfairly critiqued, isolated and micromanaged after expressing her concerns.
She said that Griffin used student opinions of instruction, a method UA uses to rate professors, to bolster his criticism. Griffin told Harris that her student opinion scores were “unacceptable.”
Because a majority of her students were white, she worried the student opinion scores were biased, consciously or unconsciously, against Black faculty.
In 2023, she wasn’t allowed to teach summer courses, leaving her without income for three months.
Communication studies dean Brian Butler recommended she apply for a new summer position to address her income concerns. Harris viewed this as a “thinly veiled attempt to pacify her in hope that she would stop complaining.” Harris applied for the position and awaited acknowledgement of her complaints.
In January, following additional complaints about treatment in the department, she was terminated.
The federal court case remains ongoing.
The University of Alabama’s College of Communication and Information Studies has 231 staff, according to the school’s institutional research data.