Julio Frenk, a Mexican public health expert who has led the University of Miami since 2015, was named the next president of the University of California, Los Angeles on Wednesday. He will oversee an elite public university still reeling from this spring's violent protests and violent attacks on student demonstrators.
Dr. Frenk will be the first Latino to lead UCLA, which boasts one of the most diverse student populations of any institution of higher education in the United States. He will succeed Gene Block, who is retiring at the end of July. During Block's 17-year tenure, the university gained academic prominence by increasing research funding and attracting top students, but his tenure ended in outrage over his handling of pro-Palestinian protests.
Dr. Frenk, 70, was born in Mexico City (his grandparents fled Germany in the 1930s) and served as Mexico's secretary of health from 2002 to 2006. He soon became dean of the Harvard School of Public Health before leaving that post in 2015 to take a professorship at the University of Miami.
All of UCLA's presidents have been white men, a record that contrasts with the school's rich history of racial and ethnic diversity: the city's first black mayor, Tom Bradley, was a graduate of the school, as were athletes and civil rights icons Jackie Robinson and Arthur Ashe.
Dr. Frenk will not begin his role as president until January. The University of California Board of Regents has appointed Darnell Hunt, UCLA's executive vice president and dean of academic affairs, as interim president from August until Dr. Frenk begins her role.