Honoring the Legacy of Dr. King
— 2022 —
“Make a career of humanity. Commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dear UCSF Community,
As we enter 2022 with the coronavirus pandemic surging and racial injustice rampant within our country, the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday offers us the opportunity to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy and gain strength from the knowledge that we can all make a difference when we “make a career of humanity.”
Making a career of humanity is who we are at UCSF, a cornerstone of our mission and our PRIDE Values. Over the course of these past two challenging years, the UCSF community has demonstrated its deep commitment to equity, justice, and action. We thank the countless individuals who are working across campus and the health system to provide patient care and advance research for Covid, to dismantle systemic racism, and to address health and healthcare disparities. Amid all the turmoil and stress of these times, these efforts are indeed something to celebrate, because as Dr. King said, we are working to make “a finer world to live in.”
To honor Dr. King’s legacy and the approaching Black History Month, let us recommit ourselves to anti-racism action and service. I invite you to attend a virtual event on February 1 hosted by the Multicultural Resource Center, the California Preterm Birth Initiative, and Dante King: The 400-Year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide – and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory.
The San Francisco Public Library is launching its More than a Month – Black History, Culture and Heritage programming beginning Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and running through the end of February. As part of this programming, on Feb. 2, UCSF and San Francisco health leaders will discuss the current status of health in San Francisco’s Black community, lessons learned from 2021, and goals for 2022 at Black Health: San Francisco.
In addition, the Multicultural Resource Center has created Martin Luther King Jr. Day Zoom backgrounds for you to download here.
Thank you for all you do to make UCSF and our society a more equitable place.
Sincerely,
Renée Navarro, PharmD, MD
Vice Chancellor
Chief Diversity and Outreach Officer
Professor of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care
University of California, San Francisco
*Racism is a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of how one looks (which is what we call “race”), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources. - Dr. Camara Jones