Dear UCLA Community,

A warm welcome to all, especially to those students, staff and faculty who are joining UCLA for the first time this Fall! At UCLA, we gather together around a common mission while bringing our cultures, histories and experiences from around the nation and throughout the world. Our incredible diversity is one of the things that makes UCLA so special.

It also requires all of us to be committed to upholding UCLA’s values and creating community where, through academic and human achievement, we can become our best.

UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is here to help. Our mission is to lead and to advance strategies for enhancing equity, diversity and inclusion; protecting civil rights; and upholding dignity for all in our community. Within EDI, the Civil Rights Office provides important trainings that inform us of our civil rights obligations under applicable law and policy and is the place to report discrimination and/or harassment through our website’s Report an Incident page. I also remind all UCLA employees, including student employees, staff and faculty, of your duty to report sexual violence, discrimination and harassment. EDI’s newly unified Research and Bruin Engagement Office (formerly BruinX) uses research and data to inform our engagement efforts around education, training, events, toolkits and more. Every year we publish UCLA’s Affirmative Action Plans, a Public Accountability Report and maintain an EDI Data Hub. These efforts inform the work we do and how we do it. This year EDI is advancing five key priorities alongside our ongoing work. One of these priorities includes a number of efforts to strengthen civil rights protections, including the recently announced Academic Senate-Administration Joint Task Force on Investigatory and Judicial Process. EDI continues to work with UCLA communities to improve our climate for the LGBTQIA+ community, support people with disabilities and combat all forms of racism. We do all of this thanks to the dedicated people on the EDI team who are on a shared mission to advance these values every day.

I invite you to join our mission. At UCLA, EDI is everyone’s responsibility and we need your help. When we treat one another with dignity, deserving of being valued not in spite of our diverse identities, but because of them, we help build community. Join us this year, whether through our EDI Events, learning more about EDI Toolkits or adding your voice to EDI Voices. EDI welcomes your feedback at WeListen@equity.ucla.edu.

As we begin the 2021-2022 academic year, I wish each of you success, whether in pursuing your degree, deepening your research and scholarship, advancing projects, and finding time to get to know colleagues and classmates. Here’s to a great year!

Sincerely,

Anna Spain Bradley
Vice Chancellor, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion