Revisions to Policy Restricting Free Speech Are Inadequate

CFA members have been actively working to address the growing concerns of free speech and political suppression happening on our campuses and across the country. We are engaged in a critical struggle to protect faculty rights against efforts by Chancellor Garcia to undermine them. This shift threatens core values of public higher education and sidelines the voices of faculty, students, and staff.

Last week, CFA leaders met with CSU management again to bargain over the Interim Time, Place, and Manner Policy (TPM).

During the session, CSU management proposed a number of changes to the policy that would address the concerns we raised when we last met. While we acknowledge their efforts to be responsive, the proposed changes fall short of adequately protecting faculty, students, and staff from discrimination or reprisal for exercising their constitutional and labor rights.

In turn, we have made a counterproposal and are now awaiting management’s response. We are committed to moving forward, not backward, and ensuring that our rights are not diminished.

We are expecting to meet with management several more times, even as we prepare for full contract negotiations in 2025.

Until we complete this process and agree to terms, the interim TPM policy does not apply to CSU faculty. In the meantime, CFA chapters are meeting and conferring at the campus levels over the addenda that define campus specific spaces and designate various administrative roles intended to enforce the systemwide TPM policy.

This September, the Academic Senate of the California State University (ASCSU) issued a resolution strongly condemning the policy. More recently, the Academic Senate at San Francisco State University introduced a resolution calling for the suspension of the policy’s implementation. The resolution cites management’s failure to engage in shared governance in developing the policy. It also shares its concerns that the policy could – and already has – created unsafe conditions that also violate the rights of students, faculty, and other campus community members.

CFA members are, and will continue to be, committed to preventing the dangerous precedent of limiting free speech and reforming our university into something other than a site for liberation. Our vision is for the university to remain a place where community members gather freely, think critically, and engage openly about how we can improve our communities while confronting injustices wherever they arise.