(c) Copyright 2002 Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. All rights reserved
On this page is a request for information from people who have personally experienced, or know about someone who has experienced, harrassment or intimidation at the University of Hawai'i regarding Hawaiian sovereignty. Following that request are the responses that have been received. More responses will be added as soon as possible after they arrive. Following those responses is an exchange of published articles in which a Hawaiian sovereignty activist tries to intimidate the general population of Hawai'i into meeting his demands for racial entitlements, and a published response by Ken Conklin pointing out the intimidation.
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BRIEF INTRODUCTION
Throughout history religious fanatics have felt compelled to destroy artifacts, icons, or symbols of other religions. The ancient Israelites destroyed graven images of pagan gods, because the First Commandment said "I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt have no other gods before me." Medaeval Christians did likewise, and irreplacable artistic and cultural treasures were lost.
In Spring, 2001 the world was outraged when a radical Muslim group, the Taliban of Afghanistan, destroyed priceless ancient statues of Buddha which the Taliban's interpretation of the Quran deemed to be sacrilegious. An editorial by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin summed up the situation nicely (second editorial in a single URL):
http://www.starbulletin.com/2001/03/07/editorial/editorials.html
"Religious faith can produce sublime expressions of the human spirit. Unfortunately it can also be twisted into intolerant fanaticism. ... At the heart of the outcry has been the fate of two carvings of Buddha, measuring 175 and 120 feet tall, hewn from a cliff face in the third and fifth centuries. One is believed to be the world's tallest standing Buddha. ... The destruction of the statues began after Mullah Mohammed Omar ruled that the relics are idolatrous and violate the tenets of Islam. ... The Taliban leader shrugged off international criticism of his order as 'noise.' This included a protest from the Vatican calling the order the 'crazy' result of 'fanatic extremism.' ... The Taliban mullahs are trying to take Afghanistan back to the Middle Ages."
In Hawai'i today, Hawaiian sovereignty activists sometimes behave like Taliban. They steal or deface books in the libraries and bookstores which contain heretical ideas. They disrupt university classes when politically incorrect views are presented. They threaten reporters, professors, staff members, and students whose views they consider unacceptable. And they get away with this outrageous behavior because timid administrators refuse to defend academic freedom. Sovereignty activists sometimes threaten the general public by reminding us all that "Hawaiians are a warrior people" whose demands for racial entitlement programs cannot be ignored without incurring their wrath.
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REQUEST FOR STATEMENTS ABOUT INTIMIDATION AT UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I
Ken Conklin, author of this website, would like to get statements (either anonymously or for attribution) from faculty, staff, and students at the University of Hawai'i who have personally experienced harrassment or intimidation because of their views on Hawaiian sovereignty, or who know of other people who have experienced such things.
The intimidation against my small non-credit course is only a small part of what's happening at UH. But if I can get others at UH to offer "evidence" of similar intimidation, and if I can show that such things have been happening over a significant period of time, it would be very helpful. Such evidence would show that the problem is not due to Ken Conklin's rudeness or aggressiveness or racism, but rather is due to the arrogance of the Center for Hawaiian Studies and its students who think they're entitled to a monopoly on academic discourse regarding sovereignty, Hawaiian history, Hawaiian culture, etc.
I'd like to ask you (and others you know who have had similar experiences) to do any or all of the following three things:
(1) Send me confidentially, with my assurance that your privacy will be protected, your personal statement describing threats, intimidation, or actual violence or property damage you have suffered, with as many details as you're willing to provide, including the response (if any) from UH administration. I have dealt in the past with ethnic Hawaiians and others who have told me they support my view on the issues but who have asked me not to reveal their identities because they are afraid for their families or businesses. Please send me your statement as you wish me to publish it, taking care to avoid identifying details; then I will further "clean" it of any identifying details I notice; and then I'll publish your statement on this webpage.
(2) Same as #1, but tell me that I have your permission to publish your name and institutional affiliation along with your statement. In that case, please write your statement, however long you wish, including your name, institutional affiliation, and contact information, which I will publish on this webpage.
(3) Either confidential or with permission to include your name and contact information: send me (by e-mail) any documentation or report numbers or other publicly verifiable evidence of violence or intimidation either at UH or elsewhere regarding Hawaiian sovereignty or cultural issues. The focus is on academic freedom, broadly construed as the right of anyone to express opinions or to publish information; and the right of students to have access to views that conflict with officially sanctioned views.
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REPORTS RECEIVED, DESCRIBING INTIMIDATION AT UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I
When the UH student newspaper "Ka Leo" ran two articles on Monday September 30, 2002 describing the intimidation of the coordinator and students of the Academy for Lifelong Learning (see section 5 of this webpage)
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreemedia.html
a professor sent an e-mail to the coordinator, Rebecca Goodman, thanking her for her courage and telling about death threats previously received.
"I cannot tell you how glad I was to see the article in Ka Leo today. When the story first broke, I thought this was yet another example of intimidation being used to destroy free speech and academic freedom. The quotation 'We're not going to let them stop us,' was music to my ears. I suppose my interest in this stems from the time I received 21 death threats and had my car vandalized, and subsequently received honorific mention [portion deleted for anynomity] as an advocate of 'genocide' [for advocating the teaching of proper English]. Four of my colleagues in CSS [College of Social Sciences] and another in TIM [Travel Industry Management] have reported similar or more severe incidents to me. Yours is the first to appear in the press, but all these incidents again raise the question: where is the top administration? A reaffirmation of academic freedom from the top is badly needed. My grateful thanks for your courage."
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E-mail sent to Ken Conklin:
I presume you are aware of the Moishe Rappaport case. Rappaport was a lecturer whose class was repeatedley and seriously disrupted by two students who were majoring in Hawaiian Studies. Rappaport invoked the University rule concerning the disruption of classes and asked Campus Security to remove the two students from his class. Hawaiian Studies was involved immediately. The chairman of the geography department who supervised Rappaport came to believe that the disruptions were actually a "set-up" aimed at any faculty member who dares teach about Hawaii but who is not Hawaiian. An initial investigation found Rappaport innocent of any wrong-doing. Hawaiian Studies appealed that decision, and a second investigation also found Rappaport innocent. Hawaiian Studies held a rally at the campus center, reminiscent of rallies at Nuremberg I had seen in old movies. Despite the findings, Rappaport has never been allowed to teach at Manoa again.
*** Note from Ken Conklin: For an indication of what the "Geography" Department is doing these days, here's an announcement of a seminar sponsored by the department on October 10, 2002. At least it's encouraging that the presenter thinks we are in a post-colonial period; but perhaps the sovereignty activists will express their displeasure with her view on that point ***
"Post-colonial Geographies of Whiteness"
Dr. Wendy Shaw, Geography Program, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia.
University of Hawai‘i, Manoa, Department of Geography
(Social Sciences building, room 443)
Dr. Shaw is a leading voice on post-colonial geographies of whiteness with reference to indigenous experiences. Her recent work includes studies on the treatment of Australian Aboriginal women in contemporary legal contexts, and exclusions of the indigenous from "heritage" designations in urban settings. Her work uses Sydney and Pacific case-based studies.
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E-mail sent to Ken Conklin:
In a discussion I quoted Haunani [Trask, Professor of Hawaiian Studies] as reported in Ka Leo: "If you don't agree with what I teach, it is because you are either ignorant or evil." [A politically well-connected woman] was a student in the class who visited every administrative office she could find to complain of the quotation -- I was called on the carpet in the Dean's office and told that I had to alter my exam procedures so as to insure that the exams did not discriminate against Hawaiians. The student brought in a tape recorder, loudly turned it on every day when I lectured, and refused to remove it from the room even though use of a recorder is prohibited by University rules.
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E-mail received by Ken Conklin:
A colleague of mine was approached by two Hawaiian Studies majors some weeks after the class began. They told my colleague that they were the two who had removed reporter Robert Reese (?) [correct spelling is Rees] from a campus gathering, and that they were in the class, not as enrolled students, but to insure that the class was taught to their standards.
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E-mail received by Ken Conklin:
For two years running, the program I direct has been unable to get a "Asian/Pacific/Hawaii" focus designation for its courses. This is ludicrous given the content and titles of the courses. I was informed that the courses did not have "Hawaiian voices". Such a requirement does not exist in the criteria established for obtaining a focus designation.
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Letter to editor published in Honolulu Advertiser November 8, 2002
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2002/Nov/08/op/op03a.html
Academic freedom allows offending views
As a long-time faculty and staff member at UH-Manoa, it was with considerable embarrassment that I read Robert Rees' commentary in your Nov. 4 paper, discussing UH-Manoa's shabby treatment of a highly controversial Lifelong Learning course on Hawaiian sovereignty, initially canceled due to threats and later quietly reinstated.
It would seem that while the UH administration ducked the larger issues of academic freedom, only the actions of The Advertiser, the instructor and a director in the Academy of Lifelong Learning persisted in having the course reinstated.
Recently, I e-mailed a faculty colleague at UH asking why no one was standing up for freedom of thought. It seems that political correctness takes precedence over the competition of ideas. That's not all too surprising.
Some years ago an assistant professor taught a controversial course in the religion department that dealt with various controversial and emotionally charged topics, including some feminist issues. Three students retaliated against the faculty member because of the course content. Against a backdrop of university administrative indifference, a federal jury finally put an end to what can only be called a modern-day witch hunt. Where, once again, is Bachman Hall?
I further find it ironic that while President Dobelle signs a petition in The New York Times upholding academic freedom, his administration seems to take it lightly when acts of intimidation close down the freedom to think at Manoa. Is this the Dobelle standard we can expect in the future?
Khalil J. Spencer
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STATEMENT FROM DR. GREGORY CARTER, HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE EXPERT, REGARDING RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST HIM AT UH WHEN HE APPLIED FOR TEACHING POSITIONS TO TEACH HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE AT UH. DR. CARTER HAS ASKED ME NOT TO POST HIS E-MAIL ADDRESS; BUT ANY READER OF THIS WEBPAGE WHO WISHES TO CONTACT DR. CARTER MAY SEND AN E-MAIL TO ME AND I PLEDGE TO FORWARD IT TO DR. CARTER FOR HIS CONSIDERATION.
I first started living in Hawai`i in 1957, before I was one year old. I attended preschool, elementary school, intermediate school, high school, community college, university, and graduate school, in Hawai`i. Since my father worked in the US Air Force, we moved several times, so I experienced living in California for one year, during grade K, and in Nebraska for three years, during grades 1 to 3, and we returned to Hawai`i when I was in grade 4. My hometown is `Aiea, where I attended Alvah Scott Elementary, `Aiea Intermediate, and `Aiea High. After high school, I attended Leeward Community College, Maui Community College, UH Hilo, and UH Ma:noa. I earned an A.A. from LCC in 1978, a B.A. from UHH in 1981, an M.A. from UHM in 1984, and a Ph.D. from UHM in 1996.
I first took a Hawaiian language course in 1973, at `Aiea High School. I later took HAW
courses at LCC, UHH, and UHM. My teachers were --- Marjorie Woodrum at `Aiea High, Naomi Losch at LCC, William Wilson at UHH, and Larry Kimura at UHM. I earned "straight A" grades, for 8
semesters, in HAW 101-102, 201-202, 301-302, 401-402. Wilson and Kimura did not award an easy A. You had to be excellent in speaking Hawaiian to earn an A from them. At UHH, I also learned from Martha Lum Ho (mother of Johnny Lum Ho), who conducted our "native speaker lab" sessions strictly in Hawaiian. I took several other UH courses relating to Hawai`i and to Hawaiian
language. Other teachers I had at UHH included Edith Kanaka`ole, Pua Kanahele, and Kauanoe
Kamana:. Other teachers I had at UHM included Pua Hopkins, Ruby Johnson, Emily Hawkins, and
Jack Ward.
As a part of my experience and training in graduate school at UHM, the Linguistics Department
arranged for me to do some work for Emeritus Professor Samuel Elbert, co-author of the
"Hawaiian Dictionary". I used a computer to typeset and create camera-ready copy for the
publication of Elbert's grammar of Rennellese and Bellonese (a Polynesian Outlier language). I
did that work with Elbert during 1986 to 1988.
To earn my Ph.D. in Linguistics, I wrote a 419-page dissertation on Hawaiian language. The
title is --- "The Hawaiian Copula Verbs He, `O, and I, as Used in the Publications of Native
Writers of Hawaiian: A Study in Hawaiian Language and Literature". My dissertation committee
members were --- P. Gregory Lee (chair), David Stampe, Robert Hsu, Anatole Lyovin, Albert
Schutz, and Pauline King (outside member [and sister of Judge Samuel King]). The members
unanimously approved my dissertation. There are only a few people in the world who have
written a Ph.D. dissertation on the Hawaiian language.
I started teaching HAW courses in Spring 1987, at UHM, at the rank of Lecturer. Since then, I
have taught 22 HAW courses (88 credits) at various UH campuses, including UHM, Windward CC,
Kaua`i CC, and Kapi`olani CC. Several times, I have applied for Instructor-level and
Professor-level jobs to teach HAW at UH, but UH has never hired me above the Lecturer level
(the bottom level). In order to survive as a language teacher, I have also taught English as a
Second Language (ESL) courses for several institutions, including American and Japanese
colleges and universities. I have worked overseas teaching English in Asia (Japan) and in
Micronesia (Marshall Islands). At present, my work experience in the field of language
teaching includes --- 82 classes taught (22 in HAW, 3 in LING, and 57 in ESL or ENG); 253
credits taught (88 in HAW, 9 in LING, and 156 in ESL or ENG); 13 venues taught for; and 18
calendar years taught in.
As a student of Hawaiian language at UH campuses, during the approximate time period from 1976 to 1983, I had no outrageous problems with Pro-Hawaiian Anti-Caucasian Racism (P.H.A.C.
Racism). However, as a TEACHER of Hawaiian language, I have been subjected to P.H.A.C. Racism
at every campus that I've worked at. The worst place is UHM. UHM is a harbor for P.H.A.C.
Racism. A HAW teacher at UHM, named Kerry Wong ("Laiana"), told me to my face that he would
not like to hire me to teach Hawaiian language because I'm "not Hawaiian". A few years later,
in 1996, I applied for a Lecturer in Hawaiian job at UHM. Wong and 6 other part-Hawaiian
teachers interviewed and ranked the applicants. At the time, I had defended my Ph.D.
dissertation on Hawaiian, I was a "Step B" Lecturer in the UH Community Colleges step-placement
system, and I had over 140 credits of work experience in language teaching, including work
experience as a Lecturer in Hawaiian at UHM. However, Wong and his race-mates, including Sam
Warner, Richard Walk, Kalani Whittaker, Naomi Losch, Samuel Ka`eo, and Dannie Bobbitt,
deliberately ranked me lower than 7 part-Hawaiian applicants, 6 of whom were hired. All 6 of
the part-Hawaiians who were hired had only a B.A. as their highest degree, and the combined
work experience of ALL 6 of them, as a Lecturer in Hawaiian, totalled 0 (zero) credits.
The "not Hawaiian" guy who had a Ph.D. and over 140 credits of experience was the "not hired"
guy. But 6 part-Hawaiians who had a B.A. and 0 credits of experience were selected by the all
part-Hawaiian interviewers.
I filed a complaint with the EEOC, and later filed a lawsuit against UH in federal court.
However, due to my lack of knowledge on how to win a lawsuit, and my lack of money to pay for a
superior attorney, and the P.H.A.C. Racism among certain federal judges, such as David Ezra (as
seen in Rice v. Cayetano) and Susan Oki Mollway (as seen in my case), I was not able to win in
court.
There is much more to tell about these matters, and much more P.H.A.C. Racism to expose,
including the fact that UH has helped to finance the publication of offensive racial slurs
which denigrate Caucasians, but that will have to wait until I have more time to write about
it.
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A HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY ACTIVIST REPEATEDLY TRIES OVER A TWO YEAR PERIOD TO INTIMIDATE THE GENERAL POPULATION OF HAWAI'I INTO MEETING DEMANDS FOR RACIAL ENTITLEMENTS; AND A PUBLISHED RESPONSE BY KEN CONKLIN POINTS OUT THE INTIMIDATION
The Reverend Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Senior, often called simply “Uncle Charlie,” is sometimes also called the Rev. Al Sharpton of Hawai’i. Maxwell, like Sharpton, demands racial reparations in the present for racial grievances from a distant past. He (ab)uses a position of trust within his ethnic community, and a title indicating spirituality, to extort concessions from others.
By clicking the link below you will find three items: (a) a published newspaper article reporting a speech Maxwell gave at the Honolulu Rotary Club on April 5, 2000 warning that ethnic Hawaiians might go back to their warrior ways unless they get what they want; (b) a published “viewpoint” essay Maxwell himself wrote, published on June 26, 2002 repeating the same threat more than two years later; and (c) a reply by Ken Conklin published on June 29, 2002.
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/maxwellwarrior.html
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You may now visit any of the following:
Expanded introduction explaining how all the below-listed pieces fit into the big picture at the University of Hawai'i
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreeintro.html
(1) A look at the racial supremacist doctrine which is the CHS party line and which President Dobelle actively supports; and a comparison with the fundamental democratic principles of unity, equality, and aloha for all.
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreechspartyline.html
(2) A discussion of the UH propaganda factory known as the Center for Hawaiian Studies, and why its monolithic party line in support of racial supremacy has become the unchallenged orthodoxy in every academic department that shares students and curriculum with CHS
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreechsoctopus.html
(3) A review of the short history of President Dobelle’s tenure as President at UH, focusing on his aggressiveness in pushing the CHS agenda and his recent pledge to politicize UH even further, harnessing UH as a partner in bringing about a racial supremacist government entity
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreedobelle.html
(4) The first exchange of e-mails between the director of the Academy for Lifelong Learning and Dr. Conklin which then resulted in the newspaper article and editorial
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreegoodconk.html
(5) The Honolulu Advertiser article of Thursday September 5, 2002, the Advertiser editorial of September 6, 2002, and the articles published in the UH student newspaper “Ka Leo” September 30, 2002.
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreemedia.html
(6) Other examples of threats, intimidation, property damage and career damage caused by CHS activists and timid administrators
https://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/uhacafreemorebads.html
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(c) Copyright 2002 Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. All rights reserved