Cal State president at center of $12M discrimination suit is up for transition job

An outgoing California State University president, one of two administrators at the center of a multi-million dollar discrimination lawsuit, may transfer to a different Cal State job while the university pays his salary and benefits. The Cal State Board of Trustees will review the transition plan and decide whether to approve the president’s emeritus status Wednesday.

The proposed new job and salary for Cal State San Bernardino President Tomás Morales will be announced at the Wednesday meeting, according to Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith. Morales received $655,626 in pay and benefits in 2024, the most recent figure available from TransparentCalifornia.

Cal State recently spent $12 million settling the lawsuit in which two female employees at Cal State San Bernardino said they were harassed and discriminated against based on their gender by two male university administrators: Morales and former Palm Desert campus dean Jake Zhu. Cal State continues to deny any wrongdoing. Zhu is an emeritus faculty member, a title given as a gesture of appreciation for service contributed to the university, and Morales remains in good standing with the university.

Morales resigned at the end of the school year and, because of his good standing, is eligible to receive a coveted executive transition package with faculty retreat rights. That means he can continue to work as a university faculty member.

This Wednesday, a Cal State Board of Trustees committee will view a presentation on Morales’ transition plan. Later that day, the full board will discuss Chancellor Mildred Garcia’s recommendation to grant him the title of president emeritus.

A ‘cesspool of gender harassment and discrimination’

The two women, Clare Weber and Anissa Rogers, both formerly worked as high-ranking administrators at Cal State San Bernardino. Weber was appointed deputy provost and vice provost of Academic Affairs on the main campus in 2017, and Rogers served as associate dean at the satellite campus in Palm Desert starting in 2019. During the 2021-22 school year, Weber and Rogers each confronted their male supervisors with what they believed was strong evidence of a gender pay gap and sex-based bullying in their workplaces. Both were pressured to resign almost immediately, they alleged in a 2023 lawsuit that calls the Cal State system a “cesspool of gender harassment and discrimination.” 

Rogers, then-associate dean at Palm Desert working under Zhu, was terrified a firing would ruin her reputation and career prospects, and agreed to resign. Weber, then-vice provost of academic affairs, refused and was fired.

In their joint lawsuit, they sued the Cal State Board of Trustees, Zhu and Morales. 

“The lawsuit shows systemic, sexist bullying,” Weber said in an interview. “It was primarily from President Morales.”

Bentley-Smith said the university system has already thoroughly reviewed all of the lawsuit’s allegations and resolved the matter through the settlement.

Weber and Rogers have submitted a public comment to the board of trustees imploring them to scrutinize Morales’ “good standing” before approving the proposed transition plan.

Cal State president accused of berating women

The lawsuit alleged Morales was notorious for routinely harassing and acting aggressively toward female Cal State employees. He ranted at women, excessively criticized and undermined them, attempted to intimidate them, and held women to higher standards than men, the suit complaint read.

But faculty concerns about Morales began years before the lawsuit. A 2016 survey revealed that over 60% of Cal State San Bernardino employees felt the campus climate had worsened under Morales’ tenure. The faculty senate wrote in a 2017 resolution of “no confidence” in Morales’ performance that the survey results indicated an environment of toxicity, fear and distrust had formed under Morales’ tenure, which they added was rife with bullying, favoritism and retaliation.

Two months before his appointment as Cal State San Bernardino’s president in 2012, while Morales served as president of the College of Staten Island, more than half of that college’s senators also approved a resolution of “no confidence” in his leadership.

“It was a ‘his way or the highway’ vibe, particularly for women. I was berated and put down and yelled at. I had other colleagues that experienced the same thing,” Weber said.

Walking on eggshells around Morales caused her stress and made it difficult to do her job, Weber said. 

“Sometimes I got to feeling isolated, like I was the only one, and I think probably other women did too,” Weber said.

In late May 2022, a California State University Employees Union study demonstrated that white male Cal State employees earn about 3% more than men of color, 5% more than white women and 7% more than women of color. 

Weber wanted to see if a similar pattern applied to her job. She conducted research, consulted a compensation specialist in the campus’ human resources office, and determined that she was the lowest-paid female vice provost in the Cal State system. She also found that, with the exception of one female, and one male who made about $3,000 less than Weber, every female Cal State vice provost made less than every male vice provost.

Weber met with her boss, then-interim Provost Rafik Mohamed, in June 2022, where she planned to discuss her concerns over the pay gap she’d identified. 

“I was scared,” she said. “I had my data, I had notes ahead of time. I wrote little encouraging messages to myself before I was in the meeting.”

At the same time, she felt she had reason to be hopeful. She’d just spearheaded and secured the university’s regional accreditation, kicked off a new strategic plan, and, only a few weeks before, earned the highest possible score on a mid-year performance review: “exceptional leadership.”

At the meeting, Mohamed attempted to assign her additional job duties, the suit alleged. In response, Weber asked for a 12% equity raise and suggested there was a pay disparity among genders at the university.

Mohamed told her he would pass the concerns along. Weber also emailed the university president, Morales, with the same raise request. Four weeks later, Mohamed told Weber she would have to resign, with Mohamed stating he “could not” work with Weber, the suit alleged.

Weber wrote an email to Morales protesting.

“I explicitly raised concerns that these female Vice Provosts were being paid less because of their gender,” she wrote. “I have been shocked and saddened that CSU’s response to my complaints was to subject me to unprecedented and unwarranted criticism and then –  just a month later –  ask me to ‘resign’ from my position. This is highly offensive and totally discriminatory, and retaliatory.” 

She asked Morales to rescind the resignation request and open an investigation into the pay equity concerns.

Weber was fired the next day, she said. She retreated to a faculty position as required by her original appointment letter.

Mohamed did not respond to CalMatters’ request for comment.

Morales’ office referred CalMatters to the Cal State San Bernardino Office of Marketing and Communications, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Discrimination also alleged at Palm Desert campus

Cal State San Bernardino hired Rogers in 2019 as an associate dean — her dream job.

“When I interviewed, it was perfect,” Rogers said. “Then I quickly realized that I had just been immersed in hell.”

From day one, Rogers said she perceived the culture at San Bernardino’s Palm Desert campus as male-driven and discriminatory. The campus dean, Zhu, stuck out to her in particular with his penchant for screaming at people, especially women. 

Men who worked for him would model his behaviors in his presence and at staff meetings, even those who were normally kind and supportive, Rogers said. Women struggled to speak up in meetings without being interrupted, yelled at, called “too emotional” and “sensitive,” or belittled, she said. By contrast, men were always treated with respect, she said. Eventually, Rogers said she gave up presenting her own ideas and began sneaking them in through a male colleague, from whom the ideas were often accepted.

In addition, several employees declared in the lawsuit under penalty of perjury that Zhu would publicly treat Rogers like a secretary or assistant, though she was the second-highest ranking employee on the satellite campus.

“It was awful,” Rogers said. “I hated going to work every day. My anxiety increased. I was constantly on guard.” 

Tensions boiled over at an informal meeting with the dean and several of Rogers’ colleagues in October 2021, at which Rogers was not present. According to various attendees who reported back to Rogers during the meeting via text and later that day in person, several men ganged up on a female interim associate dean, interrogating her for around 25 minutes about her preparations for an upcoming campus visit with a Cal State trustee. Zhu watched the verbal onslaught and did not act, various female employees who walked out of the meeting in protest alleged.

That same day, Rogers approached Zhu in his office and told him Cal State needed to do a better job at disrupting sexism. Zhu told her she could train the men to behave differently, the suit states, though the male employees involved reported to the dean. Zhu told a different faculty member who complained to him about the meeting, social work department chair Deirdre Lanesskog, that the men were probably just trying to impress him, the suit alleged.

An employee said under penalty of perjury in the lawsuit that Jolene Koester, who served as Cal State’s interim chancellor from 2022 to 2023, worked for Cal State to “coach” Zhu in late October 2021. A few days after approaching Zhu, Rogers also reported to Koester that Zhu exhibited sexist conduct and bullying.

In November 2021, Mohamed instructed Rogers to tell colleagues she was resigning, citing a “leadership issue” he did not elaborate on, according to the lawsuit. He told her that was her only option if she hoped for career advancement, the suit states. On January 1, 2022, she resigned and retreated to faculty.

“I call it fired,” Rogers said. “They told me, ‘Either leave or you will be fired.’”

The joint lawsuit by Weber and Rogers split into two trial proceedings. A jury awarded Rogers $6 million in damages in October 2025 and Weber settled for $6 million in lieu of a trial. In court, Zhu defended his leadership techniques and said he treated everybody in the same way.

“I raised voices to make a point, to change the tones, not in the malicious way or discriminatory way,” he said according to court transcripts.

While testifying, Mohamed admitted that he did not report various complaints regarding Zhu’s alleged gender mistreatment because he saw the accusations as “low-grade bias,” despite being a mandated reporter of sexual harassment under Cal State policy.

“Everybody has bias. We all harbor biases that are just ingrained in us from how we’re socialized, how we are brought up, the environments that we were reared in,” Mohamed said. “The allegation of bias in and of itself, in my view, does not require a reporting of bias, an alleged bias to Title IX. It’s the action on that bias that triggers that requirement to report.”

Mohamed did not reply to a request for comment on his role in either of Rogers’ and Webers’  departures. Mohamed announced his retirement on July 16 in an internal email to faculty reviewed by CalMatters.

Zhu did not respond to CalMatters’ request for comment.

Executive transition package up for approval

After Zhu retired in June 2023, he retreated to faculty and is now an emeritus faculty member.

Morales is slated to get an executive transition package that would enable him to retreat to faculty and stay on the university’s payroll until he starts another Cal State job. All university executives who complete this program must remain in good standing at the start and throughout the transition assignment, according to a 2022 trustee agenda item.

Executives are rendered ineligible if it is found that they violated university policy or engaged in serious misconduct, per the item.

San Bernardino’s chapter of the California Faculty Association urged the board of trustees not to approve executive transition benefits for Morales in a May statement.

The lawsuit “raises serious questions about whether President Morales should be regarded in good standing for those benefits,” said Thomas Corrigan, a communication and media professor and the union chapter’s communications coordinator. “Dr. Rogers’ and Dr. Weber’s case really stands out as a moral outrage with exceptional financial, reputational and human costs.”

After Weber and Rogers filed their joint lawsuit in March 2023, Weber said, Cal State finally kickstarted its investigation into her 2022 pay gap complaint. The university system sent her a pay analysis two months later, stating there were seven vice provosts who earn a lower salary than Weber, including four men.

The university’s analysis, Weber said, was a “sham.”

“They had a male vice provost listed as earning zero pay. They had people that were at a lower rank than me in the comparison, people that would report to me,” Weber said.

Weber said that Jeanne Durr, former interim associate vice president of Human Resources at Cal State San Bernardino, conducted the analysis; Durr did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In July 2023, the California State Auditor published a report assessing how the Cal State system responds to sexual harassment allegations. The auditor found several campuses closed sexual harassment cases without providing a reason, and did not consistently discipline perpetrators. The report listed 16 recommended reforms for the Cal State system, including developing standardized guidelines for sexual harassment investigations, regularly reviewing compliance with sexual harassment policy, and universalizing the case management system used by each campus.

In 2024, a new law, Assembly Bill 1790, set a legal requirement for Cal State to follow the recommendations by July 1, 2026. As of July 2026, one recommendation has not been carried out: establishing a system to collect and analyze sexual harassment data from all campuses. The Chancellors’ Office plans to complete this by June 2027.

Weber taught sociology for an additional four years at Cal State San Bernardino until she stepped down as agreed upon in the lawsuit settlement. 

“My faculty colleagues were wonderful,” Weber said. But “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid when I went to campus. I had numerous panic attacks. I chartered my route around campus so that I wouldn’t run into any of the administrators that harmed me.”

Rogers left her faculty position at the university within about two years.

“In the end, it killed any desire I had to ever move forward in my career. I have absolutely zero interest, which is too bad. I was hoping to be at least a dean in my career trajectory, (but) I won’t touch that,” Rogers said. “I’ve lost faith in systems.”