CFA Fall 2025 Assembly: Rising Together and Paving the Way Forward

CFA President Margarita Berta-Ávila opened our virtual CFA Fall 2025 Assembly by acknowledging ongoing challenges that public higher education is facing, while expressing trust in our members’ collective power to weather the storm and overcome these challenges together. 

“Our members, union siblings, and communities are under attack—through the suppression of free speech by the EEOC and the interim Time, Place, and Manner policy, and the violation of our human and civil rights. What we are witnessing is the dehumanization of our community members when confronted by ICE, the fear mongering around how and what we teach, and the vicious layoffs of our colleagues as well as the gutting of our academic programs. 

“But it’s about meeting the moment. It’s about us driving the movement we are in against this fascist regime. It’s about believing in our power as unionists, because the throughline is that we are one Union.” 

Over the course of our two-day General Assembly, CFA delegates and members came together and held impassioned and thoughtful dialogue on how to move our organization forward. Conversations centered around resolutions and how we ought to address them. One takeaway here was the need for accountability and shared labor—that everyone must do the work if they wish to see the transformation. 

After years of research and deliberation, our CFA officers and Board of Directors have decided to establish a Strike Fund for our dues-paying members. This important step was largely influenced by one of our Fall 2024 resolutions. In the past, and likely for the near future, we will commit to offering hardship assistance for our members when they make the important decision to withhold their labor and go on strike. For now, we want our members to focus on shaping our proposals so we can get back to the bargaining table and win a strong contract. 

Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb, co-founder of CFA’s Palestine, Arab, and Muslim (PAM) Caucus and CSU San Bernardino professor, delivered a powerful keynote that addressed the question: “What does it mean to organize labor for social change?” 

She drew connections between the recent Italian 24-hour general strike—where more than two-million people joined in solidarity with Palestine—to our fight here in California. “Palestine is a labor issue… Faculty are workers, and communities are our core and our center.”  She named the EEOC as weaponizing antisemitism to silence faculty and suppress academic freedom. “We might lose the lawsuit,” she said, referring to our recent lawsuit against the CSU administration’s failed accountability to protect faculty, students, and staff, “And that’s okay, because we will definitely win the battle if we continue the struggle with the same momentum by using our tools and our collective power. We must rise to the responsibility of defending our communities against the federal government’s infringement on our freedoms, especially academic freedom, but most importantly—their attack on our communities, such as ICE and terrorist attacks first on undocumented community members, and now on documented community members.” 

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan also joined us at Assembly. We applauded his leadership on Assembly Bill (AB) 1269—the only law in the country named in honor of a Black woman, his support for Measure J work and our CSU budget fights, and we also called him in and expressed concern for his vote on AB 715, a bill that our members strongly opposed. 

Melina Abdullah, CFA Political Action & Legislation chair and CSU Los Angeles professor, prefaced the conversation by encouraging both love and accountability. “When you love someone, you can engage in really loving ways and still have vigorous disagreements.” Moving forward, Bryan acknowledged that he would prioritize cleaning up the language in AB 715 to ensure that it genuinely protects rather than harms educators. 

Members also participated in two workshops that focused on organizing issues across campuses. The first workshop addressed strategies around different CFA campaigns: pressuring management to make fair and transparent budget decisions, pushing back against Time, Place, and Manner policies, resisting immigration threats, growing CFA membership, and cultivating leaders from within our union. The second workshop focused on establishing rapid response networks that could offer tools and structures to help defend our campus communities. We collaborated on ways to work collectively with local campus partners, off-campus community allies, and unionwide stakeholders to be prepared when crises occur. 

At Assembly, we elected five delegates to serve on our 2025-2027 Election Committee: 

• Jaimy Magdalena Mann (CSU San Francisco) 
• Dylan McClure (Cal Poly Humboldt)
• Koni Stone (CSU Stanislaus)
• Earl Aguilera (CSU East Bay)
• Jonathan Karpf (CSU San Jose)

We want to uplift Dorothy Chen-Maynard, a 2020-21 CSU San Bernardino Outstanding Service Award professor, for her 10 years of service and dedication as the chair of the Election Committee. We extend our gratitude and appreciation for past Election Committee members: Cathy Jeppson, Jonathan Karpf, Lisa Kawamura, Tendai Chitewere, and Tad Walters.  

We also recognized CFA member Theresa Montaño for her unwavering resolve and commitment to union activism, Ethnic Studies, and—more recently—her opposition to Assembly Bill 715. We celebrated CFA staff member Jackie Teepen for an incredible 30 years of service to the organization.