The California State University system has reached a resolution with Cal State San Bernardino’s outgoing president that leaves the controversy around him and the questions about the cultural values he and the university are supposed to embody unresolved, while the state’s taxpayers foot the resultant $12.343 million bill.
On Wednesday, July 22, the California State University System announced the appointment of a new president for the San Bernardino campus. Terri Gomez, a 27-year veteran in higher education and a lifelong resident of the Inland Empire, is currently the provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at Cal Poly Pomona, a university statement said.
That move was intended to close out President Tomás Morales 14-year tenure at the head of the San Bernardino campus, a denouement that has been looked forrward to with ever greater intensity over the last several years, but which does not finish entirely Morales’ association with university, the university system and the San Bernardino community. It leaves in place a highly contradictory legend of aspiration and endeavorance toward the progressive ideals of academia compromised by chauvinistic insensitivity at odds with the revered halls of learning that the liberal circle he had been abstracted into idealized him as embodying.
Morales, who was the was president of the College of Staten Island, part of the City University of New York system, before he was appointed as the first Latino president of Cal State San Bernardino, was just the third Hispanic president in the California State University System, preceded only by Tomás A. Arciniega at California State University, Bakersfield in 1983 and Mildred García served as the president of California State University, Dominguez Hills from 2007 to 2012.
Morales’ installation at Cal State San Bernardino was considered to be very important within the social hierarchy that predominates among educators in California today. At the time of his hiring in 2012, his selection to head the San Bernardino campus was considered a major breakthrough.
Tom Rivera, who had been a Cal State San Bernardino dean, was among nearly two dozen Inland Empire educators and civic leaders who had written to state legislators, the Cal State University dean and the board of trustees urging them to consider a Latino candidate, and pressed for Morales’ hiring when he emerged as a candidate for the post. Having a Latino university president was considered more than a symbolic gesture. Cal State San Bernardino had the university system’s second-highest percentage of Latino students at 46 percent. It was believed that Morales could impart an understanding of the university’s demographics that others could not.
He was not new to California when he arrived in San Bernardino in 2012. From 2001 to 2007, Morales served in various capacities at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (CPP), including provost and vice president for academic affairs, vice president for student affairs, and professor of education. While at Cal Poly, he established the Kellogg Honors College, realigned the division of academic affairs and played a key role in completing a $23 million expansion of the Bronco Student Center, among other projects.
Prior to joining Cal Poly Pomona, Morales served as vice president for student affairs and dean of students at The City College of New York (CUNY). He holds a B.A. in history from SUNY, New Paltz, and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in educational administration and policy studies from SUNY, Albany.
Morales’ as Cal State San Bernardino president evinced a sensitivity that was considered important, or at least some thought. He pursued policies widely perceived as positive.
During Morales’ presidency, the university experienced financial and student growth, physical expansion, enhanced student support, and an intense focus on community engagement and diversity, the latter achievement extending to the creation of the Cal State SB Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Board. The focus on student support Morales championed included the so-called Summer Bridge programs and strengthening ties with public K–12 school districts and community colleges in the Inland Empire to improve college attainment. He established the nonprofit Growing Inland Achievement to get more Inland Empire students into college. The university campus also began its first fundraising campaign that brought in $54 million, doubling the university’s endowment, thereby enhancing educational resources and campus facilities.
Under his leadership, 552,612 square feet of new space was added to both the San Bernardino and Palm Desert campuses, accommodating a growing student body.
In 2016, Mexico recognized Morales with the prestigious Ohtli Award, the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed upon a foreign recipient. Morales was selected for that honorific for his ongoing service and dedication to education, empowering Hispanic students, and strengthening community ties in the region.
It would turn out, however, that even as Morales was making impressive strides in benefiting one class embraced by the liberal academic establishment – Hispanics – he found himself increasingly on the outs with not one but two other groups within the constellation of progressive adherents – women and the union representing college professors and the college’s administrators.
Two administrators in particular, former Cal State University San Bernardino Vice Provost Clare Weber and Anissa Rogers, formerly the associate dean of the university’s Palm Desert campus, came to loggerheads with Morales. In 2023, they sued the California State University system in separate legal action, alleging they were constructively discharge or forced into retirement upon making reports of gender inequities, discrimination and harassment.
Weber’s and Rogers’ suits alleged she suffered at the hands of then-Palm Desert Campus Dean Jake Zhu as well as Provost Rafik Mohamed, who served as the interim provost in 2022 and was appointed provost and vice president for the university’s division of academic affairs in January 2023. In those legal actions, which were filed separately but ultimately conjoined when they were settled, they alleged a pattern and practice of gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against female employees, and that she was terminated after raising concerns about unequal pay between male and female administrators. Mohamed led the university’s largest division, oversaw five academic colleges, its Extended and Global Education program and the Palm Desert Campus. Mohamed and Zhu retaliated against the two women, according to the suits, when Weber, who was characterized by her lawyer as “the lowest paid vice-provost in the CSU system” complained that female vice provosts employed at Cal State universities were underpaid in comparison to their male equivalents, and that this was particularly the case at the San Bernardino campus. Rogers alleged Zhu callously dismissed her complaints about male administrators berating a female employee during a 2021 meeting and then forced her into retirement. Morales did nothing to prevent Mohamed and Zhu from abusing Weber and Rogers, according to the suits.
According to the lawsuit, what Weber and Rogers were experiencing and Morales’ alleged failure to redress what was occurring were reported to then-interim Chancellor Jolene Koester, who likewise failed to stem the abuse. Instead, the suit alleges the university retaliated against Weber and Rogers for making an issue out of the circumstance.
When Rogers’ case went to trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court in October 2025, she prevailed, with the jury awarding her $6 million on the basis of the emotional stress she had endured. A decision was made in March to settle Weber’s case for $6 million.
The San Bernardino Chapter of the California Faculty Association, which proved supportive of Weber and Rogers, has also taken the position that Morales’ administration of the college was less than stellar. It was Morales, according to the California Faculty Association, who was responsible for budget cuts to the university imposed by Sacramento after a state audit that found the university’s housing department was $8 million in debt.
Based upon incentive recruitment employment terms at the time of his hiring in 2012, Morales after a dozen years in the president’s post upon retirement can be deemed eligible for a one-time payment of up to a year of his current salary and placement into an academic position with the university or pursuit of a specialized educational project at the campus. Those incentive terms were eliminated by the Cal State system two years ago, and it was unclear whether the university system was obliged to honor them in Morales’ case. The California Faculty Association asserted that the incentives offered to university executives were conditional upon positive outcomes for the university. The erasure of the benefits generally based upon scandals involving other university presidents was justification for withdrawing them from Morales, the faculty union maintains. The California State University Board of Trustees should have exercise its discretion and denied Morales the benefits, the faculty union contended.
Instead, however, upon the appointment of Gomez as the president of the San Bernardino campus, it was announced by Chancellor Mildred Garcia that the university system will pay $343,920 in compensation to Morales, and that his “special academic assignment” will consist of serving as a consultant during a one-year transition from Morales’ stewardship of the university to
Garcia, antagonizing faculty members who believe Morales’ incompetence and abuse of university personnel has been glossed over by the university’s board, lionized during a board of trustees meeting for his “outstanding leadership at Cal State San Bernardino and systemwide.”
Top administrators with the California State University System, through spokeswoman Amy Bentley-Smith, said the Weber and Rogers’ lawsuits “did not result in any findings against him individually, and litigation outcomes do not determine an employee’s standing” and that the decision to settle Weber’s lawsuit before it went to trial was a strategic one “entered into to avoid further costs of litigation.” Bentley Smith said Morales remains in “good standing” as a university system employee and was entitled to a position with the university system and compensation upon his leaving as president.
Morales will not be required to be present on campus over the course of his one-year assignment during Gomez’s transition, but will be available to advise her. He will also “focus on advancing the CSU’s international engagement and strengthening global partnerships,” Garcia said. California Faculty Association San Bernardino Chapter President Tiffany Jones said the $343,920 payout to Morales for what is essentially a no-work assignment over the next year represents a “stunning failure of accountability and a direct betrayal of students, faculty, and staff. At a time when campuses face budget constraints, staffing shortages, and growing student needs, CSU resources must not be used to provide a financial cushion for failed leadership.”