A former dean at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater has filed a federal racial-discrimination lawsuit against the university, after campus officials demoted him when an audit found he had misspent university money, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday.

Lee J. Jones began working as dean of graduate studies and continuing education at Whitewater in 2004. In the fall of 2005 the university completed the audit and stripped him of his dean’s position, reassigning him as a tenured professor of education. Mr. Jones then filed a racial-discrimination complaint with Wisconsin’s Equal Rights Division, saying the audit had “found no intentional wrongdoing” and charging that his demotion had been “motivated by unlawful race discrimination.” He resigned from the university last April.

In 1999 Mr. Jones helped found Brothers of the Academy, a nationwide group aimed at increasing the number of black men who earn Ph.D.’s and work in academe.