Inaugural Address
Good Morning,
Regents, leadership of UCLA and the University of California, faculty, staff, students, alumni, benefactors, colleagues, family and friends: Welcome!
A special welcome to Janet Reilly, chair of the UC Board of Regents; to UC President Michael Drake; and to my esteemed colleagues, the chancellors from other campuses in the UC system.
President Drake – Michael – I have benefited from your wisdom and friendship for many years, and I want to express my gratitude to you for all you have done for our institution and for me. You have been a tireless champion of opportunity and justice through higher education and health care.
As we come together, I wish to honor the legacy of the six chancellors who came before me, whose names are inscribed on the medal I now proudly wear. In particular, I acknowledge my immediate predecessors, former chancellors Gene Block and Albert Carnesale, as well as former acting chancellor Norman Abrams. I also thank our Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, Darnell Hunt, who provided steady leadership as interim chancellor until my arrival.
I greatly appreciate the presence of delegates from other universities, as well as government, community and business leaders from Los Angeles and the state of California, and diplomatic representatives from other countries. Among the dignitaries who honor us today are the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, and the chair of the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribal Council, Chief Anthony Redblood Morales.
I am delighted to be joined by members of my family, including my wife and colleague, Felicia Marie Knaul, Distinguished Professor at the Geffen School of Medicine, my children and their respective partners and my brother-in-law.
Many others – present and absent – have played a crucial role in my life. Time does not allow me to mention all of them, but I always carry with me the blessing of their love, friendship and support.
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I stand today before you with a deep sense of gratitude and responsibility for the opportunity to lead an extraordinary university at an extraordinary time.
Higher education in the United States faces its moment of greatest challenge in living memory. Public confidence in the value of universities is eroding, and their long-established partnership with the federal government is under severe stress.
At UCLA, our standing as a center of unmatched creativity, innovation and democratic values is being questioned. We must meet the moment with courage, resilience and wisdom. I am determined to channel the powerful mix of talent and commitment that defines the Bruin Spirit to make sure that UCLA continues to advance the values that underpin our value to society: search for truth, freedom of expression, respectful disagreement, expansion of opportunity, embrace of difference, dedication to service, and the relentless pursuit of inclusive excellence.
Such values have been part of UCLA’s essence since its humble beginnings. In 1919, our institution opened as the Southern Branch of the University of California, with just 1,300 students. But from the start, there was a spark of inspiration – a belief in the power of public higher education to transform lives.
We built quickly. Within a decade, we moved to Westwood – a campus carved into the hillside, with four buildings and a vision for more. New schools, new disciplines and new dreams took shape.
We became a center of learning, inventiveness and service – opening our first professional school during the Great Depression, pioneering medical and nursing education after World War II and launching programs in the arts and athletics.
Then came our major breakthroughs, which elevated UCLA to the world stage and continue to this day. UCLA is the birthplace of the internet; we revolutionized cancer treatment, and we peered into the heart of our galaxy.
That trajectory – from beginning to building to breaking through – still defines us. And we are just getting started.
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Shortly after I arrived in January, we initiated an intensive, immersive and iterative listening exercise.
Through 38 sessions, we brought together close to 6,000 faculty, staff, students and alumni. In addition, I met with government, civic and business leaders, and we launched a website for Bruins to share their views, where we have received more than 1,500 questions and suggestions.
I attended each meeting with open ears, an open heart and an eye toward the future that we would build together.
Two key points emerged:
First, there is so much pride and passion in our community. Bruins care deeply about this institution, and we care deeply about one another. We not only want to succeed and see our students succeed – we want to flourish.
At the same time, there is a great deal of fear and uncertainty as universities confront an unprecedented range of challenges.
To navigate this terrain, and to take us to a place of even greater strength, I will share today what I see as our three greatest aspirations. These defining visions synthesize what I heard in the listening exercise and set us on a path to a promising future. In our collective vision, we aspire to be a university that is: connective, impactful and exemplary.
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Connective University
Our first aspiration – to be a connective university – meets an urgent need of the moment. We live in a time of high connectivity but little connection.
Great universities bridge divides. They connect generations through education; disciplines through research and scholarship; geographies through global collaboration; eras through knowledge preservation; identities through inclusion, and they connect communities through service.
This last dimension of our connective character was put to the test when the wildfires broke out – on my second day in the office! The worst natural disaster in the history of Los Angeles brought heartbreaking loss and destruction. But the show of support and solidarity was heartening.
That same spirit continues as we focus on the long road to recovery. UCLA faculty from across campus are lending their expertise to reimagine our city – and to build back more safely and more sustainably. I am proud to say that UCLA is not just a university in Los Angeles. It is a university of Los Angeles.
During the emergency, we launched UCLA Connects, an integrative framework to drive even stronger connections between our scholarly and creative work, our public service and the wider world.
An extraordinary opportunity for connection is also offered by the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028, when the world’s spotlight turns to Los Angeles and UCLA welcomes the Athletes’ Village.
This will be a moment when UCLA’s excellence will be on display. Bruins have already won 284 Olympic medals, a remarkable record that builds on our 124 national championship titles in intercollegiate athletics. Through the pursuit of fair play, inclusion, teamwork and community building, athletics are connective.
More broadly, UCLA Connects will also look inside, as we focus on healing and rebuilding trust among the members of our own community of students, faculty and staff. I will say more about that later. For now, let me emphasize: I commit to enhancing UCLA’s role as an active catalyst of connections within and between our internal and external communities.
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Impactful University
Our second aspiration is to be an impactful university. Knowledge – the essential product of universities – is crucial to understanding the world in a meaningful way and to driving enlightened social transformation. Now more than ever, we must build a sturdy bridge that connects scholarship to solutions, enabling us to fulfill our ultimate duty to society.
To do so, we must defend our institutions. Institutions provide the matrix for building durable structures that enable purposeful action. Institutions remain after individuals move on, allowing them to transcend with and through others.
Our ultimate obligation is to protect the legacy we have received from those who came before us and hand it enriched to those who will come after us. That is the foundation of sustainable progress. Universities count among the institutions with the most enduring staying power. They provide the type of continuity that builds civilizations. At the same time, they cultivate critical thinking and creativity that propel positive change.
A crucial moment in that process came immediately after World War II, when the power of science came into dramatic display. At that point, the United States government established a compact with universities, so they would serve as the main sites for conducting research while at the same time building the pipeline of future talent. This model has brought immense benefit to the nation and the world.
UCLA is a relatively young university, but we have achieved a remarkable record in just 106 years. If we measure accomplishment relative to institutional age, UCLA has to count among the highest-performing universities. And that same youth means that we have much rich potential ahead of us. Preeminence and promise are the two sides of our institutional coin.
Great universities like UCLA understand that our positive impact does not stop when we expand the frontiers of knowledge but continues when we purposefully translate discoveries into innovations. This is a way of further expanding the value of our research to society. At this time of threatened reductions in federal research sponsorship, technological innovation is also our best option to diversify financial sources and keep the engine of fundamental research running.
The acquisition and further development of the UCLA Research Park represent a unique opportunity to accelerate the growth of an integrated innovation ecosystem in the heart of Southern California through vigorous partnerships with the private sector and philanthropy.
This bold vision is already taking shape through the first two anchor projects at the Research Park: the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy and the UCLA Quantum Innovation Hub. I am grateful to our partners and benefactors for their ongoing commitment. Together, we will continue to demonstrate that excellence and relevance are mutually reinforcing values.
A shining example of this virtuous conjunction can be found at UCLA Health, where fundamental research fuels the development of novel services that improve and save the lives of nearly 1 million patients every year. Behind that number lie inspiring stories that we must share to regain the public’s trust, especially at this time of attack on science and its indispensable role in advancing well-being, prosperity and security.
Our impact does not stop there. Cultivating the arts and the humanities enriches lives by providing meaning and illuminating purpose. UCLA is home to cultural treasures, which are enjoyed by more than half a million people who visit our campus every year to attend over 1,000 different arts events.
I was blessed to grow up in a family where science, medicine, the arts and the humanities coexisted in harmony. This experience resonated with a theme I heard repeatedly during the listening exercise: the need to integrate research, scholarship and artistic creation as the best way to advance knowledge and address complex problems.
I commit to promoting this type of integrative paradigm, which so well suits the diverse and complementary talents of our gifted faculty.
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Another critical endeavor where we must continue to break down silos is educational innovation. Education was one of the few fields that did not experience a technological revolution during the 20th century – compare it to health care or communications, for example. That revolution is happening right now.
We owe students our best effort to elevate the quality of their education by applying cutting-edge advances in pedagogical science and technologies. Beyond campus, the innovation imperative is underscored by the fact that our students are graduating into the most dynamic labor market in history. To respond to this reality, closed educational systems should give way to open systems designed to meet people’s evolving educational needs throughout their careers.
The key concept here is education for life, which has two meanings: first, education that lasts an entire life, including during our work years; second, education that prepares students for life, by enabling them to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives as constructive members of a community.
I commit to delivering on this vision through a bold new initiative, UCLA for Life, which will involve our Teaching and Learning Center, UCLA Extension and the many hubs of educational innovation already active in our schools and college.
Such innovation will allow UCLA to expand even further the benefits of its high-quality education, which is key to restoring public trust in universities. Our strategy in this respect is guided by inclusive excellence – an integrative concept that simultaneously seeks the achievement of the highest standards of quality and the expansion of access to larger and more diverse groups. Some believe that these two goals are mutually exclusive. We affirm that they are mutually reinforcing. Excellence without inclusion deepens inequality and resentment. Inclusion without excellence leads to waste and frustration.
I commit to further elevating UCLA’s position as a university that is both distinguished in its high level of achievement and distinctive in its commitment to broaden access and success for students from all walks of life.
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Our wide-ranging work on research, education and service does not happen in a vacuum. It can only flourish in an effective organization. To be truly impactful, universities must extend the value of excellence – so central to the core academic mission – to all the crucial functions that support such a mission.
Effective institutions always strive to do things better, reflecting a culture of continuous improvement. During periods of disruption, however, this is not enough. At such times, it is necessary not just to do things better but to do things differently and, indeed, to do different things.
To this end, we are undertaking a disciplined, self-reflective exercise of analyzing if what we are doing – and how we are doing it – is the best way to achieve our goals. Institutional transformation will be guided by extensive consultation with faculty and staff. Our North Star will be to ensure that the resources entrusted to us by society add maximum value back to society, while always making certain that we protect our academic core mission.
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Throughout the listening exercise, I heard concerns and suggestions as your chancellor, but I also understood them in my role as a member of the faculty. The fact that most positions in academic administration are held by faculty members is a key feature of shared governance – an institutional innovation perfected at the University of California. I am a strong believer in this model and am committed to upholding it.
I have mentioned our faculty and staff. We also need the loyal support of our 670,000 alumni around the world, who personify the positive impact of our educational mission.
And, of course, we need our big-hearted benefactors. The root of the term “philanthropy” translates to “love of humanity,” and our benefactors live those words. They believe in the value of our work and want to see it connect with the world. I am grateful to each of them and salute the catalytic role played by The UCLA Foundation.
In addition to the economic support it provides, philanthropy makes an invaluable contribution to building trust in universities. Indeed, our benefactors entrust their hard-earned resources to our stewardship so we may use them to achieve valued goals. Such acts of generosity signal to others in society, including policymakers and taxpayers, that universities are indeed a force for good.
I commit to working with our partners and supporters to ensure that we earn every day the public’s trust in UCLA as a consequential and impactful institution.
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Exemplary University
Our third aspiration is to be an exemplary university. This means that, through the values they profess and the behaviors they exhibit, universities can serve as models for the larger society of which they are part.
We have a firm foundation on which to build in pursuit of that ideal. UCLA is the number one public university in the nation, and it is part of the premier university system in the world. We have the strength to engage now in a process of institutional renewal that will enable us to better meet the complexities and imperatives of the current moment.
An essential step in that process is to examine the events that so painfully divided our campus during the spring of 2024 and engage in a deliberate effort toward reconciliation and repair, so we may turn polarization into pluralism. I pledge to continue listening to you as we work together to restore and reaffirm the bonds that define a true community.
At a time when many voices question the value of universities, I submit that our value is indivisible from our values. The values that I enumerated at the outset should be our beacon as we navigate the turbulent waters of higher education. We must make sure that they are not a mere declaration of good intentions but a guide to the way we connect to each other in everyday encounters, so that we may value both our differences and our common sense of purpose.
There are two points on which I am sure we can all agree:
First, by recognizing the inherent dignity of every human being, we must actively prevent and combat discrimination. Nobody on our campus should feel unsafe because of who they are or what they believe in. Remember that when one group becomes the target of bigotry, no one is safe. This is why we have launched a comprehensive Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, which is an essential element of our determination to end all forms of prejudice and intolerance on our campus.
We should respect each person’s right to embrace all dimensions of their identity. At the same time, we must avoid the corrosive tendency to see people solely through identity-based categories, assuming that they are uniformly alike within those groups, and losing sight of their individuality. Such distortions flatten individual identities and lead to rejecting entire groups as the “other.” This is the ultimate form of dehumanization.
History teaches us that stigmatization of groups, if left unchecked, has led to the worst atrocities. Fortunately, most members of our community share a common ground of empathy and kindness to connect with each other beyond the confines of faceless categories.
Second, we should agree that in a university, the way to process differences is through reason and dialogue, not hate and violence. Good universities not only tolerate but cultivate diversity of thought. They stand against dogma, conformity and indoctrination.
We can disagree, passionately, even vehemently, but always respectfully. Respect begins by never dismissing opposite perspectives but instead listening to them and engaging in dialogue across differences. Creating the space for such engagement is one of the key roles that universities play as social institutions.
To that end, I am announcing the launch of a series of Campus Community Conversations. This will be a participatory process to build consensus around the fundamental questions of our coexistence: What does each of us owe to fellow members of our community? And what can each of us expect from fellow members of our community? By undertaking this kind of conversation, we will provide a valuable service not only to our university and higher education, but to society as a whole at this time of extreme polarization.
After my initial listening exercise, I have concluded that the majority of us want to be part of such a conversation. In doing so, we can become an exemplary institution.
As your new chancellor, I commit to engage passionately with everyone so that together we can restore connective relationships to all in our community.
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For me this work is profoundly personal.
The defining moment of my life happened when my paternal grandparents were forced to leave Germany in the 1930s, along with their two children – my father, who was six years old, and his sister, who was four.
A series of coincidences took them to Mexico – a nation that was poorer in material wealth but richer in what mattered the most, then and now: kindness to strangers.
It is relatively easy to be kind to people we know. But it is much harder to be kind to people who are different. Yet it was such kindness that saved my family’s life and made my own life possible.
Like all my siblings and cousins, I was brought up with a sense of duty to reciprocate kindness to strangers. As a result, we have all devoted our careers to public service – through science, medicine, music and education.
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This has been the pathway that brings me to you today. I am proud to be the first Latino chancellor of UCLA. (Me siento orgulloso de ser el primer rector latino de la UCLA.)
While we all are proud of our respective heritages, we must also acknowledge that each of us holds diverse identities. The resolve to stand against the external forces of discrimination and intolerance can be strengthened if we embrace our own inner diversity. In this way, we can counter an exclusionary definition of the “others” and find true connection – not only with those we know, but especially with those we do not know, with people who may be strangers but are not strange to our common humanity. Each of us is all of us. Exemplary universities must demonstrate to the larger world that such an enlightened pathway is indeed possible.
I commit to serve this university as everyone’s chancellor.
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Conclusion
By fulfilling our three aspirations — to be connective, impactful and exemplary — we can help define what a great university ought to be in the 21st century and inspire renewed trust in the promise of higher education.
Earlier, I traced our institutional trajectory over 106 years of progress powered by vision, resilience and the boundless energy of generations of Bruins.
All of that history remains with us today. It feeds our spirit and drives our aspirations. Let us honor that extraordinary legacy and derive from it the strength to meet the unprecedented challenges of our time.
As we forge a new path into our second century, let us meet the future with confidence — not because it will be straightforward, but because we are ready to move forward.
As UCLA has evolved from a humble beginning to vigorous building and to remarkable breaking through, its trajectory has been fueled by boldness. We are now entering a new era where such boldness will be more necessary than ever before. This is not a time to retreat. It is a time to be bold:
Bold in standing up for the enlightened values of higher education, which have delivered unprecedented benefits to humankind.
Bold in defending the unfettered search for knowledge as a cornerstone of democracy. Bold in translating our discoveries into solutions to the most complex challenges facing the world.
Bold in continuing to promote access to higher education as the most legitimate avenue toward equal opportunity and social mobility.
Bold in innovating education so that our students are not only competitive in the labor market but competent in the civic square.
Bold in healing divides through kind connection, respectful dialogue and transformative service.
Bold in pursuing excellence in every aspect of the way we organize ourselves to fulfill our irreplaceable mission.
This is the future that we can and will build.
I stand here with full confidence: UCLA is more than ready to meet the moment.
Together. And always inspired by the Bruin Spirit.
Remember: We are One UCLA.