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Monday, June 8, 2020

New VC for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

UCLA announced today that Anna Spain Bradley, an expert in international law and human rights who has advised the United Nations, has been named the new vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion. She will start Sept. 1.
In this capacity, Spain Bradley will serve as the senior campus official responsible for leading and coordinating efforts to create an inclusive environment for all students, staff, faculty, alumni and community partners by fostering and affirming a campus culture based on our core values of excellence, equity, diversity and inclusion and by facilitating an integrated vision and shared responsibility for advancing these institutional goals. The vice chancellor’s broad areas of focus include high-level coordination of campuswide diversity initiatives; strategic planning; training, education and research; community relations; policy development; compliance; campus climate issues; communications; and fundraising.
“I am deeply honored to serve as UCLA’s next vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion,” Spain Bradley said. “UCLA’s commitment to these values and its leadership on inclusive excellence in higher education offer a much-needed model in our nation and around the world. I am committed to deepening these achievements in ways that serve the campus and our community.
“In this time of challenge and needed change in our country, community matters more than ever. Building authentic community requires us to see one another, accept one another, value each other and recognize our inherent human dignity,” she added.
Spain Bradley returns to UCLA from the University of Colorado Boulder, where she served as served as assistant vice provost for faculty development and diversity since 2017 and has been a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School since 2009. As assistant vice provost, she led policy development, served on the authoring committee for the campus Inclusion, Diversity and Excellence in Academics Plan, developed and provided training, and advanced initiatives for improving campus diversity and inclusion.
“The painful events of recent weeks have underscored the importance of the critical work that every institution in America must do to turn our nation’s promises into reality, and I am confident that Professor Spain Bradley is uniquely suited to coordinate UCLA’s efforts to nurture a campus — and a broader community — built on equity, inclusion, respect and justice,” said UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Emily Carter in a message to the campus community.
“I believe a university’s greatest strength is its people,” Spain Bradley said. “I look forward to building relationships and collaborating with students, staff, faculty, alumni and the broader UCLA community to advance these values in authentic ways.”
Spain Bradley is currently writing a book on global racism and human rights, and she has been invited to advise the United Nations, foreign governments and international organizations on these matters. She is the author of “Human Choice in International Law,” forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2021, as well as a casebook, numerous book chapters, law review articles and shorter works. She has received the American Society of International Law’s Francis Lieber Award and the University of Colorado Law School’s Gamm Justice Award in recognition of excellence in scholarship. She teaches courses on international human rights, international dispute resolution, mediation and national security, and she has served as a faculty adviser to the University of Colorado’s Black Law Students Association and International Human Rights LLM students. In 2018, she was one of four educators in the nation to receive an OZY Educator Award.
Prior to joining the University of Colorado faculty, Spain Bradley served as the deputy director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law. She previously served as attorney-adviser at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser and as a delegate to the United Nations Compensation Commission in Geneva, twice earning the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award. She has held positions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where she worked on climate change policy, and at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, where she worked on international trade agreements. In addition, she has more than 20 years of experience as a mediator helping communities and people resolve disputes and end conflicts, and she is a founding member and former board member of Mediators Beyond Borders International. She occasionally serves as legal counsel for nations before international tribunals and frequently gives keynote talks to a variety of audiences.
A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Spain Bradley is also a former member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and a member of the state bar of Pennsylvania. She earned her B.A. in environmental studies at Denison University and her J.D. at Harvard Law School, where she served as an executive editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. She has worked in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, North America and South America.
Spain Bradley will succeed Jerry Kang, UCLA’s inaugural vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion, who will return to research and teaching on June 30. Carole Goldberg, the Jonathan D. Varat Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita and former vice chancellor for academic personnel, has agreed to serve in the position on an interim basis through July and August, until Spain Bradley’s term commences.
“I also want to recognize and thank Jerry Kang for his exemplary leadership as our inaugural vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion since 2015,” said Carter, who also noted that she and Chancellor Gene Block recognize this position’s paramount importance to the campus community. “As Chancellor Block mentioned in a campus announcement last fall, the procedures and systems Jerry established have provided us with an institutional map to help inform and guide our continued efforts to advance equity, diversity and inclusion at UCLA.”

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