Chancellor Frenk shared a campus message with the Bruin community.
Dear Bruin Community:
Since I began my listening exercise in February, I have met with 29 schools and units, and more than 5,000 faculty, staff, students and alumni. I have received more than 1,500 comments and suggestions on the listening exercise webpage. Through it all, one of the topics that has come up consistently has been the turmoil on campus last spring and the ways it has affected our Bruin community.
I was not at UCLA last spring, and I am grateful to all of you who have courageously spoken about what you experienced. I have heard about the pain you felt — pain at coming under physical or verbal attack, pain at feeling that your cultural, ethnic or religious identity was being stigmatized, pain at feeling unseen or alone in a time of polarization. In particular, the terrible acts of violence on April 30, 2024 continue to weigh heavily on our community. I deeply regret that you had to face such immense difficulties.
I want to acknowledge this challenging period in UCLA’s history as well the pain many of you still feel today. As chancellor of this university, I am committed to doing everything in my power to protect our students, faculty and staff. History has taught us the importance of remembrance and bearing witness — we do that in this month of April, renewing our community’s commitment to dialogue without violence and without hate.
Since last spring, UCLA has taken meaningful steps to ensure we can both maintain our commitment to free expression and make our campus a place where all Bruins feel safe, welcome, supported and able to thrive. In my first few months, my leadership team and I have had open and honest conversations with faculty and staff from all groups and persuasions about the issues they face. We welcomed Steve Lurie, an experienced public safety leader, to head our new Office of Campus and Community Safety and improve the ways in which we support Bruins, and I am appreciative of this team’s hard work. And we’ve opened up new channels for those with different perspectives to process those differences through respectful discussion and debate.
There is still much work to do. Healing, reconciliation and rebuilding trust take time. I hope that the steps we’ve taken — and the ones we will continue to take — show a shared commitment to creating a more inclusive, supportive and respectful campus for everyone. I welcome your thoughts about how we can do even better.
I ask that you join me in reflecting on the importance of kindness, open-mindedness, and a commitment to work through differences by listening to and learning from one another in a framework of mutual respect.
Our path forward depends on it.
We are One UCLA.
Julio Frenk
Chancellor