This story was first published in the Monday, Nov. 18 edition of the Daily Post. To get important local news stories first, pick up the Post in the mornings at 1,000 Mid-Peninsula locations. Even our competitors pick up the Post. We know because they plagiarize our stories.
BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
The former president of Foothill College in Los Altos Hills has received $215,000 to drop her lawsuit alleging that she was fired because she is a Vietnamese woman who focused on racial issues.
The settlement ends a three-year battle between Thuy Thi Nguyen and the Foothill-DeAnza Community College District.
Nguyen was hired as Foothill College president in July 2016, becoming the first Vietnamese American college president in the United States.
Nguyen had a “laser-like focus” on diversity, equity and inclusion, her colleagues said.
Nguyen’s faculty revolted against her in October 2021. They said she failed to collaborate with the Academic Senate, going against the school’s “shared governance” model with the senate and president making decisions jointly. Nguyen repeatedly vetoed faculty decisions or otherwise ignored existing governance structures to pursue her own agendas, chemistry instructor Kathleen Armstrong said in a letter to the board.
Nguyen allegedly canceled programs and eliminated positions without getting feedback too.
“This high-handed management style has created a climate of distrust and disillusion among faculty,” Armstrong said.
Faculty voted to declare “no confidence” in Nguyen, and the college board placed her on leave the same day.
Nguyen was paid through the end of her contract on June 30, 2022. Her salary was $343,153 a year.
Racial justice groups, such as the Asian Law Alliance and the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP, supported Nguyen. They said she advanced racial equity at the college, closed a $6 million budget deficit and never had any problems on performance reviews.
“We condemn in the strongest term any attempt to tarnish or diminish in any way one of our community’s most precious assets,” said Diane Le, board president of the Vietnamese American Professional Women of Silicon Valley.
Nguyen’s supporters tried to get her reinstated without success, so Nguyen sued the college district in May 2023.
Nguyen’s efforts to achieve racial equity “generated some hostility among powerful members of the Foothill College faculty, who used their political influence to persuade the chancellor of the district to coerce (Nguyen) into restricting her efforts,” Nguyen’s lawyer Dan Siegel said.
Nguyen’s lawsuit suffered a setback in January, when federal Judge Nathanael Cousins said that Nguyen didn’t show any evidence of direct discrimination or that she was treated differently because of her race.
Instead, Nguyen relied on vague statements, like that she “would have been treated differently if (she) was a white male president,” Cousins wrote in his decision.
Cousins did not dismiss Nguyen’s claims that the college district retaliated against her because of her allegations.
Nguyen and the college district agreed on a settlement on July 26, court records show.
The college district provided a copy of the agreement on Thursday after a California Public Records Act request by the Post.
Nguyen was replaced by Kristina Whalen, former vice president of academic services at Las Positas College in Livermore.
Foothill College is the most popular destination for Palo Alto graduates. Over the last four years, 15% of Gunn High School graduates and 10% of Palo Alto High School graduates went to Foothill College, the high schools reported.
The college district switched to by-area elections last year. So rather than voters picking all five board members, individual cities pick one representative each.
That shifts the balance of the board, which had three out of five members from Cupertino.
Former Palo Alto school board member Terry Godfrey was elected on Nov. 5 to represent Palo Alto and Stanford for the next four years.
The college district has a $410 million budget this year, mostly funded by property taxes.