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Evelyn Lee Visiting Scholar Lectureship in Cultural Competence and Diversity

The annual Evelyn Lee Visiting Scholar Lecture in Cultural Competency and Diversity is sponsored by the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Diversity Committee in remembrance of Evelyn Lee, EdD, who served as a clinical faculty member for more than twenty years before her passing in 2003. The lectureship aims to to further her mission of expanding diversity, equity and inclusion in the field of mental health by bringing prominent experts to share their experiences and expertise with campus trainees, faculty, and staff.

The 2026 Evelyn Lee Visiting Scholar Lecture

The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences will host the next Evelyn Lee Visiting Scholar Lecture on Wednesday, October 14, featuring 2026 visiting scholar lectureship honoree, Tania Israel, PhD.

She will deliver her talk entitled "Teaching and Practicing Mental Health in Turbulent Times" as part of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Grand Rounds series at 12:00 p.m. PDT in the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building's Lisa Stone Pritzker Auditorium and Convening Center. The event will also be streamed live via Zoom at psychiatry.ucsf.edu/watchgrandrounds.

About this year's honoree

Tania Israel, PhD

Tania Israel, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus of Counseling Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and award-winning author of Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide and Facing the Fracture: How to Navigate the Challenges of Living in a Divided Nation.

Dr. Israel’s work on navigating political conflict has been received enthusiastically by professional conferences, corporations, campuses, political organizations, and faith communities. She has shared her expertise with top media outlets, such as the TODAY show, New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR, as well as on her podcast, Ready to Be Strong. Her TEDx talks include "How to Win a Political Argument" and "What Halibut Fajitas Taught Me About Bridging the Political Divide."

Dr. Israel has facilitated educational programs and difficult dialogues about a range of topics, including abortion, law enforcement, religion, and sexual orientation. She has received honors from Congress, the California State Legislature, and the American Psychological Association. To learn more, visit taniaisrael.com or connect with her on LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok.

Previous lectureship honorees

About Evelyn Lee, EdD

Evelyn Lee, EdD

Evelyn Yee-Wai Miu Lee Fong, EdD, was born on June 25, 1944, in Macau, China. She received her BA in social work at Chung Chi College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1963. She went on to graduate from Case Western Reserve University with an MSSA in social work in 1968. Lee worked at Boston's South Cove Community Health Center from 1976 to 1980 as the director of mental health, social services and health education before moving on to receive her doctorate in mental health administration at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) in 1983. Between 1980 and 1982, she served as a social science analyst for the federal government in Washington, D.C. In 1982, she joined the Asian Focus Psychiatric Inpatient Unit at San Francisco General Hospital as program director, as well as being appointed assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In 1988, she founded the Chinese Family Alliance of Mentally Ill, and in 1992, helped to organize the NICOS Chinese Health Coalition, both in San Francisco.

In 1999, Lee was promoted to clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF. She served as a consultant on cultural competence and diversity for many community health and mental health organizations, schools, hospitals and local, state, and federal government agencies, such as the National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health, Georgetown University, the California Department of Mental Health, and Texas Department of Mental Health.

An author of more than 30 publications, Lee wrote and taught on topics such as cross-cultural communication (including the use of interpreters), refugee trauma, immigrant acculturation, intergenerational conflict resolution, the role of religion, and complementary/alternative/integrative medicine approaches. In 1988, she authored the widely used parenting handbook Ten Principles for Raising Chinese American Teens, which was subsequently translated and adapted into Chinese and Vietnamese. She was widely respected and loved in the mental health field and the Asian-American community as a clinician, administrator, teacher, author, community advocate, and humanitarian.