May 15, 2026
Dear Members of the UC Santa Barbara Community,
After four years of exemplary service as our Vice Chancellor for Inclusive Excellence, in both a permanent and interim capacity, Dr. Jeffrey Stewart has informed me of his decision to step down and return to his faculty position as Distinguished Professor of Black Studies.
I am truly grateful for Jeffrey’s leadership and counsel on inclusive excellence, as well as for his countless contributions to build a more inclusive and welcoming community on our campus. During his time as Vice Chancellor, Dr. Stewart has worked to ensure that our campus environment is accessible and supportive for everyone. He launched L2OVE (Listening to Everyone, Valuing Everyone) and other programs to build a proactive framework for campus dialogues, and completed the 2025 Campus Climate Survey designed to inform strategic actions to improve the environment and enhance the sense of safety and belonging on campus for all members of our communities. He has led initiatives that have identified opportunities to strengthen support for students, staff, and faculty, including the Benjamin Banneker faculty recruitment initiative. Supported by an Advancing Faculty Diversity Award from UC Office of the President, this initiative is aimed at enhancing faculty, research, and curriculum, especially in STEM fields, and fostering a just, more diverse, and sustainable future. In September 2025, Dr. Stewart hosted an international conference at UCSB entitled “Black AI: Inclusive Innovation for All.” I am also grateful for his service on the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Antisemitism and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Islamophobia and Anti-Palestinian Bias.
A member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Dr. Stewart is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a Distinguished Professor of Black Studies, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair. His book The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke won the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction as well as the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. He has also received numerous other honors, including the 2019 Mark Lynton History Prize of the J. Lukas Prize Project Awards, the 2019 James A. Rawley Prize of the Organization of American Historians, the 2019 American Book Award, and the 2018 PROSE Award for Best Biography/Autobiography.
Dr. Stewart joined UC Santa Barbara in 2007 and served as Chair of our Department of Black Studies until 2016. Throughout his tenure, he has advanced campus diversity through visionary projects, including the North Hall 1968 Takeover Display and “Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse,” an immersive pop-up experience in Isla Vista that he developed in conjunction with his course, BLST 14: The History of Jazz. As a MacArthur Foundation Chair, Jeffrey has extended his Jeffrey’s Jazz Coffeehouse project into Los Angeles, where it collaborates with local arts organizations to bring music and UCSB educational programs to the public. He organized a Benjamin Banneker Quantum Summer Institute during the summer of 2023 that offered a two-week residential program in physics and quantum computing for high school students at UC Santa Barbara. Jeffrey is also the author of numerous articles and books, including the Yale University Press volume Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington.
I am very pleased to announce that, after consultation, I have asked Professor Dolores Inés Casillas to serve as Interim Vice Chancellor for Inclusive Excellence. Dr. Casillas is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute. As Director, she has raised the profile of the Institute and brought in substantial new grant funding. She also has been active in the UC system, in particular with the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Nationally, she has represented UC Santa Barbara in the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities. Author of the prize-winning book Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanish-language Radio and Public Advocacy, her research focuses on immigrant engagement with U.S. Spanish-language and bilingual media and the representation of accented Spanish and English languages within popular culture. She received her bachelor’s degree from UC Davis and two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to joining our faculty in 2007, she was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Santa Cruz and a Faculty Fellow at Stanford University.
In the coming months, I will continue consulting with our Academic Senate, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and campus community as we work to identify permanent leadership and ensure that our efforts in this area continue to grow and evolve to meet the needs of our community. Please join me in extending our sincere thanks to Dr. Stewart for his outstanding leadership and service, and his continuing contributions as our faculty colleague. Please also join me in extending a warm welcome to Dr. Casillas as she takes on this important interim role.
Sincerely,
Dennis Assanis, Chancellor