President Milliken recently shared the following reflections in his Substack, “The Gold and the Blue, Volume 22.” 

I recently sat down with UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk for a conversation as part of my ongoing series of discussions with UC campus leaders. You can watch our conversation here.

Chancellor Frenk and I have gotten to know each other well over the past year. We both arrived at UC in 2025 and were immediately confronted with big challenges.

Julio came to UCLA after nine distinguished years leading the University of Miami, including through a pandemic, a major hurricane, and a campus evacuation. On his second day of his first full week on the job at UCLA, the Los Angeles wildfires broke out. Several months later, the Trump administration suspended nearly $600 million in research grants to UCLA. I asked Julio if he was jinxed. He took the question in stride, and, in typical fashion, offered sage advice on leading through adversity. His instinct is to communicate constantly and to look for the opportunities that crises force you to see.

There is plenty ahead that will demand exactly that approach. UCLA will exclusively host both the Olympic and Paralympic villages for the 2028 Summer Games. This will be a logistical undertaking of historic proportions that Chancellor Frenk views as an opportunity to showcase the greatness of UCLA and its contributions to the world.

On AI, he sees universities playing three essential roles: as the originators of the basic research that made the AI revolution possible, as educators of the workforce that will navigate it, and as institutions that must model for society how to adopt it responsibly.

And on the future of higher education itself, his concept of UCLA for Life — the university as a lifelong partner for learning rather than seeing education as a four-year transaction — is one of the most important ideas in American higher education right now.

Over the last year, I have also come to appreciate how Julio’s remarkable story, and that of his family, has shaped him. His paternal grandparents fled antisemitism in Germany in the 1930s with their two young children. One of them was Julio’s father, who was six years old. The family ended up in Mexico, and to this day, Julio credits Mexico as the foundation of his family’s success. “They knew no one, no one knew them, no one owed them anything. Yet [Mexico] embraced them. They gave them an opportunity to start a whole new life,” he shared.

Julio was raised with the conviction that his life’s work should reciprocate that generosity. He has found his pathway, as he puts it, through education and healthcare, the two pillars of equal opportunity. His family’s story has informed every step of his career.

That’s the kind of leadership this moment requires, and we are fortunate to have Chancellor Frenk and other outstanding leaders serving across UC.

Stay up to date with news from President Milliken! Subscribe to his Substack “The Gold and the Blue, Volume 22.” 

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