Faculty leader blasts U of A’s recent million-dollar-plus legal settlements

The Arizona Board of Regents, the governing body that oversees the state’s three public universities, recently approved UA’s settlement payments in two lawsuits:

• $2.4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a Maryland-based marketing company that claimed the UA breached its contract in an athletics-related deal;

• $1.55 million to settle a 2025 lawsuit filed by 185 people who alleged gender-based pay gaps between men and women working at the online University of Arizona Global Campus, although the UA denies the allegations.

Speaking to the Faculty Senate, Hudson questioned who was responsible for actions leading to the athletics-contract lawsuit and for the settlement the UA now has to shell out.

“Is it Athletic Director Desiree Reed-Francois, is it whoever is responsible for procurement of contracts under (UA’s Chief Financial Officer) John Arnold, or is it President (Suresh) Garimella?” Hudson asked rhetorically at the Faculty Senate's October meeting.

“Where does the buck stop?” Hudson continued.

“Adding insult to injury, ABOR shields the responsible U of A administrators by extending their contracts and their compensation lavishly,” she said.

UA officials didn’t respond to the Arizona Daily Star’s request for a response to Hudson’s statements.

ABOR also didn’t respond to Hudson’s comments, but told the Star, “The settlement items were posted publicly on Sept. 29 and the summaries of each were available to the public on the board’s website."

Hudson said questions abound on these legal settlements, especially as “loyal and productive faculty, staff, and students are rather ruthlessly called to save pennies and to signal a simulacrum of fiscal responsibility.”

“Between teaching, research, and supporting one another in our community, we ask with no financial incentive, why do people who make bad decisions about contracts and partnerships still have jobs and get richly rewarded?” she said to the Faculty Senate.

Hudson also questioned if the UA has exhausted its state-sponsored risk management insurance with these lawsuits, and if its insurance premium will go up in the face of these “failures.”

Athletics-related settlement 

The $2.4 million settlement was agreed upon between the UA and Baltimore-based plaintiff Leona Marketing Group, a company that has industry experts who guide athletic departments in finding the best deals for multimedia rights and apparel rights.

UA’s contract with Leona was based on a footwear, apparel and equipment agreement, UA’s general counsel Cliff Iler told ABOR. He said the UA “ultimately” entered into a contract with athletic apparel giant Nike, but didn’t state reasons why the contract with Leona was breached.

In the lawsuit, Leona said it was entitled to a success fee of $2.1 million based on the contract, and the rest of the amount would be for expenses and attorneys’ fees. In this case, a success fee is something Leona would earn if it achieved a particular result, rather than being paid a flat fee or hourly rate by the UA for its work.

According to ABOR documents, the UA will pay the entire amount of the settlement. The documents also state: “Self-insurance is not provided through state risk management in this matter because all the claims asserted by Plaintiff are contract claims.”

Hudson contended to the Faculty Senate that the legal strategy of the UA’s Office of General Counsel is “rolling over for corporate counterparties in foolish deals, outsourced contracts and shady public-private partnerships.”

“Public-private partnerships, in my experience, are almost always a situation that allows the privatization of profits and the socialization of losses upon the public — in this case, us throwing money at administrators who are detached from the academic endeavor is not the way to turn the ship around,” Hudson said.

UAGC settlement

UA’s settlement in the gender-pay gap lawsuit totals $2.6 million. A $1.55 million settlement will be paid by UA Global Campus or UAGC in the form of two payments — $500,000 from insurance and $1.05 million in cash. The rest will be paid by the state’s risk management department through the state’s self-insurance program “and UAGC insurance proceeds,” according to ABOR documents.

The lawsuit, “Anderson et al v. Arizona Board of Regents and The University of Arizona Global Campus,” was filed by plaintiffs on May 8, 2025, as federal claims in the Southern District of California under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII.

UAGC, formerly the for-profit, private Ashford University, an online school that was based in California, was acquired by UA in 2020 from its former parent company Zovio Inc. UA officials have contended the UA is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for actions by Ashford and Zovio that occurred before the acquisition.

Hudson told the Faculty Senate, “While we always support — and I feel confident in saying this on behalf of the faculty — any contribution to eliminating gender or other pay inequities, especially for our U of A female deans and other women colleagues, this surprising legal settlement, in so far as it covered a majority of UAGC i.e. Ashford colleagues, was rather a humiliation initiated by the Robbins’ administration’s bizarre Ashford acquisition and consummated now in rather ignominious form by the Garimella administration.”

She pointed back to 2020, when Robert Ct. Robbins was UA president. Hudson said faculty and deans at the time had warned the university against the Ashford acquisition and “dangers of a public-private partnership.” “A public trust like a university is the target of exploitation by the private companies and partners organized around profit, debt, and the extraction of revenue from students,” Hudson said.

The purchase of Ashford under Robbins was controversial at the time, with the UA buying the university and its 35,000 online students for $1 but adding about $265.5 million to UA’s operating costs.

UA faculty at the time expressed disapproval of the purchase, noting Ashford had accreditation problems and had been sued by California for allegedly defrauding veterans and other students through misleading marketing and predatory loan practices.

But the Arizona Board of Regents has defended the purchase in a report to the governor, saying the financial and legal risks were known but were mitigated through financial, contractual and academic measures.