The former secretary of health during the government of PAN Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and current president of the University of Miami, Julio Frenk was elected on Wednesday as the new chancellor of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), thus becoming the first Latin American to direct one of the most important public universities in the United States.
The Board of Regents of the University of California unanimously approved the appointment of the 70-year-old Mexican academic, to lead the educational institution that is considered one of the main American research centers.
Doctor by profession, Frenk has extensive experience in public health and has led major fundraisers for the University of Miami and the Harvard School of Public Health.
Frenk served as Mexico’s Secretary of Health from 2002 to 2006, then became dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and In 2015 he assumed the presidency of the University of Miami.
The doctor will replace Gene Block -who will leave his position in July after 17 years- and will take office in January 2025.
Photo: X (@UCLA)
“At this crucial time for higher education, returning to the public sector to lead one of the world’s best research universities, including one of the 10 largest academic health systems, “It is an exciting opportunity and a great honor for me.”Frenk said in a statement.
Of German and Jewish roots, Frenk will have to deal with a divided campus for the way the university responded to protest camps against Israel and Hamas’s war.
Added to this are the labor disputes and complaints of increasing workload for teachers.
Julio Frenk was one of the more than 250 Mexican intellectuals who signed on May 20 a position in favor of the then presidential candidate of the Fuerza y Corazón por México alliance, Xóchitl Gálvez, at the initiative of the academic, anthropologist and sociologist Roger Bartra.
The manifesto called for a vote for Gálvez and warned of a “derives authoritarianism during the next six-year term” and a “serious threat to democracy” for the triumph of the Morenoist candidate Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, who finally won the elections with a difference of more than 30 points over Gálvez.
(With information from EFE and Aristegui News)
