Dear UCLA Community,

Winter quarter at UCLA has proved challenging. As Chancellor Block’s important message last week highlighted, times like these ask more of us as individuals and as a community: to support one another as we learn, teach, work and serve.

UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) team and I bear witness to many of the harms that cause suffering in our community — and the compounding effects of these harms given the strain we all must endure from the ongoing pandemic. Discrimination, harassment, and hateful threats, whether in the world or on social media, have no place at UCLA. If you see something harmful happening to a classmate or colleague, please speak up, recalling that all employees have a duty to report allegations of discrimination, harassment, sexual violence and/or sexual harassment to the Office of Equity Diversity and Inclusion’s Civil Rights Office. Reports of discrimination or harassment of any kind can be made on our Report an Incident page. Reports of potential threats or behaviors of concern can be made to the Behavioral Intervention Team. Please visit the EDI website to find out more about your rights and responsibilities, the investigation process and confidential and non-confidential resources. There is no substitute for making a personal commitment to behave in ways that uphold human dignity.

But personal action is not enough. Strong community requires collective action, where we commit to specific ways of supporting one another. EDI is in conversation with a variety of groups, including the UCLA Committee on Disability, UCLA Committee on LGBTQ Affairs, Academic Senate and Administration Joint Task Force on Investigatory and Judiciary Processes, Moreno Report Implementation Committee, and the UC Gender Recognition Task Force, to advance efforts that achieve inclusive change. In addition to these initiatives, we offer a variety of ways for all members of the UCLA community to get involved, including our Education and Training Hub, Resources for Confronting Bias, newly launched Dismantling Racism Toolkit, and regular events for people to engage and to learn more. I also invite you to learn how your fellow Bruins have advanced EDI throughout UCLA, featured in our EDI Voices. If you’re an EDI voice or you have suggestions for a future feature, please let us know!

Finally, on April 18, 2022, we are pleased to welcome the Honorable Keith Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General, to deliver the 2022 UCLA Thurgood Marshall Lecture, sponsored by the Office of the Chancellor with thanks to our co-sponsors, the Bunche Center for African American Studies, the Critical Race Studies Program at UCLA Law, the Institute for American Cultures, the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and the UCLA School of Law. Attorney General Ellison’s own commitment to promoting civil rights and justice reminds us of Thurgood Marshall’s powerful call to active citizenship: “We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust… We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”

As a community, we can do better to realize our values. The moment demands it. EDI welcomes your feedback at WeListen@equity.ucla.edu.

Sincerely,

Anna Spain Bradley
Vice Chancellor, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion