Arcus Mourns Loss and Celebrates Legacy of Urvashi Vaid

May 16, 2022

We mourn the loss and celebrate the legacy of former Arcus Foundation executive director, Urvashi Vaid—writer, lawyer, scholar, activist, philanthropist. Her influential career, activism, and work is known to so many of us and will inspire and motivate people for decades to come.

Along with legions of others, we will miss the love, insights, rigor, energy, and humor that she brought to our movements. Urvashi loved deeply and lived a life of integrity and deep values—a life that was about the realization of justice in all its dimensions, particularly for those most bereft of it. She fought for equity for all the diversity in humanity, and she spoke truth to power, including and especially to those active in the movements to which she was so faithful.

Urvashi made incalculable contributions through research, mentoring, speeches, and writings that will serve and inspire justice seekers for generations. It is in that spirit that we will remember Urvashi throughout this week by publishing a series of her own words on our social media channels, beginning with the following:

One [thing LGBT communities must accomplish] is to take care of the parts of our community that are less powerful. That means low-income LGBT people, transgender people and our community’s women, whose rights are getting the crap kicked out of them, parts of our community across the board—kids, old gay people.

“The second thing I would love to see happen is for the LGBT community to use its political power and access to create a more just society for all.” Huffington Post, 2014.

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