Recent News
Below you'll find our post category archive. Note that many titles will have , , and at the end of the text. These help identify pages, posts, and events representing our three core values: Community, Thriving, and Wellness. To learn more about this, read about our Action Plan. These also all help support our #ActForInclusion.
Building a Culture Where Black People Thrive: Resources for Confronting Anti-Blackness
Dear Campus Community, I am writing to follow up on Chancellor Gillman’s call to the campus community on May 31 to dismantle systemic anti-Black sentiment. I want to announce the creation of a dedicated website entitled Building a Culture Where Black People Thrive: Resources for Confronting Anti-Blackness. Accountability for confronting anti-Blackness begins with understanding. Understanding the ways that bias, prejudice and bigotry impact the lives of Black people is a choice that we must make as individuals and as a campus community. As the national reckoning has demonstrated, the sense of grievance is deep and long standing. Anti-Blackness deprives Black…
Pride: Bending the Arc of the Moral Universe ♥★✚
Dear campus community, This Pride month is like none other. COVID-19 has led to the cancellation of parades across the country in support of the LGBT community. Still, there is so much to reflect upon about how inclusive the United States is in 2020. In a landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that discrimination against gay and transgender employees is unconstitutional. For the first time, the employment protections of the Civil Rights Act (1964) will be extended to sexual orientation and gender identity. This is long overdue. Last year marked the…
Office of Inclusive Excellence | Why Juneteenth Matters in 2020 ♥★✚
Dear campus community, Today the campus observes the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth or National Freedom Day. It refers to the date when enslaved Black men, women and children in the state of Texas collectively marked their emancipation at the end of the Civil War. Since then, Juneteenth not only commemorates the ending of chattel slavery by Black communities, but also bears witness to the millions of Black people who were enslaved and exploited for well over 400 years. (For more information, visit the National Museum of African American History & Culture: https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/celebrating-juneteenth.) Juneteenth is different from the celebration of national…
Office of Inclusive Excellence | Inclusive Excellence and the UCI Police Department ♥ ★ ✚
To the Anteater community: We are writing to announce several actions to further align the UCI Police Department with our commitment to inclusive excellence and confronting anti-Black racism. This commitment is grounded in a community where all expect equity, support diversity, practice inclusion and honor free speech. Realizing this commitment mandates a campus police department that serves our university community according to these principles. These actions further UCI Police Department’s work to continuously improve service and relationships with the University’s diverse community and build on the recommendations of the 2019 Presidential Taskforce Report on Universitywide Policing. We are also acting…
Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory | Black Lives Matter | A message from Director Michael A. Yaasa, Ph.D. ♥★✚
Friends, We have watched in horror and grief as the events of the last few weeks transpired, exposing systematic anti-Black racism as persistent, pervasive, and lethal. It is a fundamental issue that plagues our society and reminds us that our work is far from done. While we can look back on the progress made since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, the senseless murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others remind us that we still have a long way to go to ensure that our society ceases to dehumanize…
Susan and Henry Samueli College of Health Science | An Act of Solidarity ♥ ★ ✚
Dear UCI community, I think we can all appreciate that this has been a difficult week. UC Irvine Health came together this afternoon to kneel for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. We knelt at our desks, in clinic halls, on hospital wards, and outdoors. We all took a knee in solidarity, humility, and awareness. We came together in remembrance of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others who lost their lives to racism in this country. We came together to declare Black Lives Matter. While today’s demonstration was powerful, tomorrow, and in the days thereafter, we must all work to ensure that the momentum…
UCI Libraries | Library Resources on Racism and Diversity
New Ebook Collection: Understanding and Combatting Racism The UCI Libraries stands in solidarity with the campus in its stance against anti-blackness, and as allies against racism.  To support the campus educational role and intellectual discourse on this timely topic, the Libraries offer a new ebook collection in OverDrive: Understanding and Combatting Racism. To access this collection, login with your UCInetID to read ebooks online, download titles to your device or read on your Kindle or ereader. Borrow up to five books at a time and select either 7 days or 14 days to borrow. Ebooks will be returned automatically, there is…
UCI Cross-Cultural Center: Black Life is Sacred.
Black Life is Sacred. Our spirit is truly with all of our Black community members at this time. We mourn and grieve for the families and loved ones of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery and acknowledge many local racist and anti-Black incidents that have not received the same amount of national attention. The movement for Black Liberation requires that each of us interrogate how deep-seated racism, anti-Blackness, systemic oppression and white supremacy are at the core of each incident leading to the loss of Black life. We must break these cycles of dominance and work diligently towards…