Dear UCSF Community,
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling blocking the Trump administration from immediately rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is a significant victory, ensuring that some 700,000 young immigrants—including students at UCSF—can retain their legal status in the United States to study and work, without fear of deportation, for now.
The program, established by President Barack Obama in 2012, allows so-called Dreamers, brought to the United States illegally as children, to apply for a temporary status that lasts for two years and is renewable. While the Supreme Court’s ruling today is good news, advocates must work to prevent opponents of the DACA program from seeking a lower court to consider their arguments. The ruling also does not provide a path to citizenship for our DACA community, and we must work to ensure Congress takes up this action.
As we continue seeking equality and equity for all, we must continue to do more, on DACA and other key issues. We are in the midst of a critical conversation about race and discrimination, especially of Black Americans, in our country, and more must be done to advance LGBTQ rights, to name just two important challenges.
In celebrating today’s Supreme Court ruling on DACA, I express my gratitude for UC President Janet Napolitano’s leadership on this important issue. The University of California has been a key advocate for DACA and was the first university in the nation to file a lawsuit challenging the proposed rescission of the DACA policy. I invite you to read the ...
Dear UCSF Community,
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects all Americans from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This is a resounding affirmation of our belief that there is no place for discrimination of any kind in our society.
June is Pride Month and even as we celebrate this victory for equality and dignity in the workplace, we also strongly denounce the Trump administration’s action on Friday to repeal protections for transgender patients against discrimination when seeking health care. This is directly at odds with UCSF’s core commitment to providing unbiased, equitable, and welcoming patient care for all, including transgender and non-binary people, and all LGBTQ individuals.
In California, where state laws prohibit many forms of LGBTQ discrimination, the impact of the rollback will largely have no impact. In 28 other states, however, the repeal of this protection will leave transgender individuals exposed to discrimination in health care.
At UCSF, we must continue pursuing our decades-long work of championing equity and the rights of all members of the LGBTQ community. Klint Jaramillo, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center is working to support and raise the visibility of the LGBTQ community through advocacy, education, training and, recently, by championing a pronouns campaign to increase awareness about using everyone's correct gender...
Dear Colleagues,
In the last two weeks, our nation has gone from outrage and grief over the racial injustice seen in the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery to the extraordinary calls for addressing the systemic racism that underlies these tragic deaths and the many that preceded them.
At UCSF, we have a responsibility to speak out against violence, including police violence, that is racially motivated. It is anathema to the core values of our community, which stands firmly against bias and discrimination of all kinds. Violence of this nature, along with other elements of systemic racism, is a public health issue. We denounce it and we must take action to eliminate it.
More broadly, as I stated in my message to the community on May 31, we at UCSF must continue the hard work of dismantling the structural barriers of racism in education, research, employment, and health care. As we undertake this long-term work, we can learn from the leadership of our colleagues here at UCSF calling for change today.
Members of the global STEM community have organized a day of reflection tomorrow, June 10, called #ShutDownSTEM, to draw attention to the impact of systemic racism and injustice on Black people in STEM and academia. We support this movement, and encourage you to take time tomorrow to reflect on what each of us can do in our lines of work to address racism.
In addition, members of our campus community are organizing peaceful sit-ins on Thursday to bring further campus attention to these issues.
At a leadership level, the Chancellor’s Cabinet will be...