Conversations for Change: On Improving the Racial Climate at UCI ♥

Dr. Douglas Haynes, Vice Chancellor, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Douglas M. Haynes is the inaugural UCI Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer. Reporting to Chancellor Howard Gillman, vice chancellor Haynes leads a comprehensive effort to establish UCI as a national leader and global model of inclusive excellence. At the core of this aspiration is a campus community where all expect equity, support diversity, practice inclusion and honor free speech. He received the Institutional Equity Award from the American Historical Association. The Academic Senate honored him with the University Distinguished Midcareer Award for Service. He was also recognized by the campus Black Staff and Faculty Association for advancing faculty diversity.

Liz Griffin, Chief of Police, UCI Police Department

Liz Griffin has been the Chief of Police for UCI Police Department since May 2019.  She came to UC Irvine from the Long Beach Police Department, where she has served since 1992 with 27 years of service.  At UCI, she oversees a team of 50 officers and more than 60 public safety and professional staff who provide 24/7 safety and protection for the campus of nearly 37,000 students and the medical center. She earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at California State University, Fullerton, and a master’s in Emergency Services Administration at California State University, Long Beach. She is a graduate of the LAPD West Point Leadership Program and the FBI National Academy.

Dr. Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Director, Humanities Center & Professor, Asian American Studies

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor and chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She received her Ph.D. in U.S. History from Stanford University and previously taught for seventeen years at Ohio State University. She authored Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: the Life of a Wartime Celebrity (University of California Press, 2005) and Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (Cornell University Press, 2013). Her current book project, a collaboration with political scientist Gwendolyn Mink, explores the political career of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color U.S. congressional representative and the co-sponsor of Title IX.

Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Associate Professor of African American Studies

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard is Assistant Professor of African American Studies, a Faculty affiliate of Gender and Sexual Studies as well as Queer Studies at the University of California, Irvine. During her time at UCI, she has received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research through her contribution in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and Division of Undergraduate Education. She works on comparative racialization in the South African and North American contexts, Black political thought, and African feminisms. Some of her research focus include topics on South Africa, poor whites, race in foreign policy, diaspora, comparative racial politics, feminism, and community and civic engagement. In her recent book, Waste of a White Skin: Carnegie and the Racial Logic of White Vulnerability, she uses black feminism, black internationalism, and the black radical tradition, to explore the effect of politics of white poverty on black people’s life, work, and political resistance.