 History history is here to help. This is think tech. I am J. Fidel. It's a given Thursday and we're talking about an article in the paper about, uh, please don't gut at the university research budget. And so we have with us to discuss this a long time professor at the university and history, um, Peter, welcome to the show, Peter. Good morning. Thank you. Yeah, so let's talk about the article. You were driven to write this and it appeared in the star advertiser. It's a powerful article, but query, um, you know, what, what drove you to write it? Thank you. What drove me to write it was most immediately the last year or two. There have been some concerted attacks on the university and there have been significant discussions within the university. The two together. I mean, we've all been here long enough to know that many things that are planned. I love the rail. Don't come to fruition, but there's a critical mass both inside and outside. And I think that Some of your viewers know me. I'm old enough that now I'm reflecting on my career, but it's also my father's career. I'm a second generation university professor. And I think quite obviously won't surprise anybody. The recent trends in American life and even an international life for universities. Research universities are not the places they used to be. Sometimes for very acceptable reason life changes, but others for political reasons and reasons which I think are counter to the Significant tradition of a public research university and I am speaking about a very specific type of educational institution. So I suppose what finally drove me was in my 25 years here. Which I have enjoyed and have embraced as much as I can and have been embraced. There is only one major public research university. So what we do to Manoa Cannot be taken up by anybody else. It cannot be taken up by private colleges. It cannot be taken up by community colleges. It cannot be taken up by the building of you at UHS to one. There is a specific type of university and Manoa is the only example of that in our 50th state. Well, Peter, can you define research because Marcy Greenwood, a couple of presidents ago, you know, was famous for saying that the University of Hawaii can be very successful, even profitable if you look at grant writing as an economic economic experience. And so her thought was that if we're doing science, we write a lot of grants and we get a lot of grant money. It's almost as if we have an entrepreneurial activity going on. So my question is, what do you mean by research? Is this research in in history or is it research in science? As my beloved middle child would say, two things can be true. It is research in science and certainly UH is positioned probably better in some scientific fields than other public universities. The plea is for that scientific research, which may or may not be remunerative, right? It may or may not have a commercial aspect. But we could say, for example, volcanology and marine biology have an environmental impact. All right. Nobody I know, and after being a long time, I know most of the folks even if I wouldn't have coffee with them, nobody in the humanities or non sciences is saying no scientific research. Nobody is saying that. What we're saying, though, is for a major research university to answer your question, research is across the board. So yes, research is in the buoys necessary for safe maritime life and it is having cutting edge Shakespearean scholar. They're both and major research universities have been able to traditionally accomplish both sometimes from public funding, sometimes from private funding, very rarely tuition. So the discussion here in the legislature about university funding itself by tuition, no, no schools fund themselves solely by tuition. Am I right to say, right? Am I right to say that funding by national organizations by charitable institutions and the like has has diminished over COVID or is diminishing now? I don't know whether the numbers are diminishing. I would say that people are more selective and COVID has over the last two years closed the doors on a significant number of colleges, even a few universities. So there's probably less money out there, but are probably also less recipients of that money. I think probably if you want to discuss the COVID, we have a situation where the questions if online Zoom learning requires professors to do their research, right? I mean, you can see where this argument ends with some people, right? If we go online and if professors or teachers are really there to teach online, it may not be necessary to do research. So they are all connected. I think though, as I mentioned in my piece, the advertisers very kind to publish it. They have limits as you know, we're limits. So I can't remember where this was included or not, but COVID was as we've talked about all like all historical catastrophes. Some of the things that are done, we're waiting for a crisis to get done, right? An airline looks at COVID and already wants to cut certain flights, right? It takes advantage of that. So I would like people to be very careful when they read what the university is potentially undergoing. I would like them to recognize that sometimes COVID is used as a cover. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That's a such a true statement. Some, yes, because of COVID certainly, but a lot of things have been in the pipeline and you and I have been here forever. So we know that to a certain degree, and this is not to pick on anybody, but to a certain degree when the decision was made to build West Oahu, there were already cuts towards Manoa on the table. Well, you know, you didn't mention it in the article, but I would like to mention it now. It seems like the legislature has been on the attack against the university for at least a few years. And there are certain legislators out there. We can talk about them by name if you like, who have it in for the university and who are year after year attacking the university and the university budget. You didn't talk about it in the article. Well, I wonder if you could talk about, you know, the underlying problem here is the willingness of the legislature to fund the activities that are that the university is involved in. Absolutely. I didn't mention that. It was it was edited out, which is fine. I think that you're absolutely right that probably a critical mass of the legislature just doesn't care about the university. And that allows the five or six people we read about to attack the university such as give me a list of 30 professors who aren't pulling their weight like we had two years ago. We know, though, in an imperfect democracy, including Hawaii, legislators can do things because people are either generally indifferent or not specifically supported. So again, I don't also don't find the general public support here for a major research university in the sense of, as I did mention my article, and I feel in a very heartfelt way. I've worked out there, taught kids out there that the kid from Kahuku, who does not want to end up only folding a towel at a hotel and has a love for French poetry. And it might end up being a brilliant writer. But as I did mention my article, which is the obvious point that kid can't get on a train or a car and cross the border to go to another major research university. And I think I know that that seems like a rather banal example, but I think we'd be surprised about the number of kids here in high school, who went asked if they could learn to paint. If they could spend time learning literature. So the growth of the Hawaiian studies program is a good example. There was a demand for people to learn the Hawaiian language in a systematic and advanced way right, including Hawaiian studies professors who research in the Hawaiian language so out there in the public just thinks the Hawaiian study center is teaching what's already known. That's not true. It's a little small restricted, but I don't mean we're sticking in a bad way I mean restricted in its goals, research center in the Hawaiian studies is a research center. That was a very powerful part of your article. It touched me. And I wonder, you know, and your article hopefully will be read by members of the legislature, including those who would attack the university. But we need more than your article Peter we need somebody from Manoa to go down and talk to those people maybe David Lassner somebody to maintain a campaign to explain it to them and educate it and bring the points of your article home to them. Has this been happening. Has it been successful in any way. Well, as you know I'm not a particularly plugged in person. So, and I'm not sure that a super professor should be my role is to observe to discuss to analyze. I do communicate with the president and the deans about various issues. And I'm more than happy with your question to follow up. I have a strong sense that my, my column was a small pebble and might have been might not actually even have been read. It's quite possible. I would say though, which is not an exercising ego. I would say a lot of my colleagues do agree with me, but also across the board. I mean I do know a fair number of scientists. We also recognize that having students who read and write well improves the nature of science. I mean there's a reason that law schools go after English majors, those kids learn how to read carefully. They also as you know as a lawyer you can't read every single word so they know how to read intelligently and they know how to write. And if we're dealing with only commercial ventures, or only research that has immediate remuneration. Most of those will go by the wayside me technical writing for example will still be taught. But I think one of the things that I wanted to emphasize which I think you appreciate and some of the readers might appreciate is. We also are supposed to educate the next generation of professors. So if, if all we do is teach. We don't teach them how to research, we don't encourage them to move language along. And so when they teach, they can tell if they can say correctly what professor up and got wrong, not just repeating my lectures and that's all part of the dynamic. About critical thinking critical thinking and the critical thinking to be able to admit, and especially today as we've talked about right the role of the past and the abuse of the past, right to be able to understand it to express it and to be able to say you know my my professor was wrong. This is why she was wrong, but you can't do that unless you have active research, graduate students. And I guess the final point was I, and this may be purely utopian. I really feel it, it strengthens the entire community. I really feel it strengthens just the nature of life here in Hawaii. The young people who stay here, what we read about in the newspapers, what people read in general I just to be to me a major public research university is was one of the hearts and souls of the community. Well, let me let me touch on a couple of other points that I wanted to ask you about. Number one is, you know, we learned from Evan Dopell on forward that the university can, if it wishes, spend enormous amounts of money on genes and administrators, you know, I mean half a million dollars is never a surprise and still isn't. And so, I guess there are people in the ledge and in the community that, you know, that react to that. Furthermore, you know, this is an issue of tenure, and I guess that's more sophisticated but I think there are people in the university who would like to see that reformed. So my question from Dopell on forward, can't the university do do some reforming here can't the university, you know, spend a little less on some of these things. Wouldn't that help. I think that would help in the sense of streamlining a bit, putting more money into teaching and research faculty that administration. But again, that's not my field of expertise so when I look at administrators. Each of them has a particular law behind them requiring their existence and then there are sub administrators. I agree with you I'm not sure. Financially, what a big hit that is I think politically, it's an issue. And some of the best major universities have administrators who either rotate around, or still continue to teach. So I think part of the difficulty is the gap between administrators and the classroom experience. Certainly if you had a DOE third grade teacher, I think she or he would agree with me that but I guess that we talked about this in general. That's part of modern society right too many folks administrating who don't really have the experience of being in the shop. So what I would like to see if David were here with me is I would see I would like to see some cutting and pruning. But I would also like to see administrators with classroom experience who on a regular basis actually go back to the classroom. One thing that COVID might have taught us and in fact, you know, if we were looking carefully 10 years before that, one thing that MOOCs might have, you know, massive online open courses, as have been developed on the mainland. I was going to say flourish but I don't think they've flourished they've been developed but they haven't flourished. They've never been adopted much in University of Hawaii. Would that help with that help in terms of getting a word out of having that kid learn French poetry. Would it be a way to extend and leverage, you know, the intellectual activity of the University out into the community. So as usual, the answer is a multi level in general yes in general getting a positive educational word out. I would say that that the danger of that as you well know is that that will replace classroom education. So in other words, if we were to, and we've seen it right zoom has replaced both here and elsewhere. And that worries me. And I think we all know about the significance of being in a classroom for no other reason than being able to listen to the person next to you eight and being able to just accept that that's part of life. Okay, okay, so as far as I could see the University, in particular doing what you suggested with some of our more esteemed faculty, and particularly those who still want to teach but would like to retire. So I could see a niche for that. My goal would be to get people to the university, rather than the university to them. And that's one of the reasons I get I can't remember whether it's edited out or not. It's not a program. And it is a successful program. No, that was in the article. Yeah, right. And so I've had friends the community retirees who've taken Dr. Mark Merlin's force on Hawaiian flora. Right something they've driven by every day 50 years, but they come here. Now again with Kobe their restrictions. I would. So I would say I'd like to see a nice combination. Sure, get the word out. Be able to provide a new scene to me we could have professors go to various, like my colleagues and I go to assisted living. And we give lectures, we could do much more of that. I also think that we could make the university much more accessible like I constantly hear complaints about parking and this and that. I also see when there is an event that people want to go to a Kennedy Theater the parking lot is full. And certainly the volleyball games are full. So, there are, there are people who are willing to to come here so I guess the answer would be I agree with you, but the quick pro quo would be to get folks to come here. Get the family from Kapuna to come here and let the kids sit in the class and let the parents enjoy more than once in my lifetime here in person lecturing I've had parents who just are I've never had the chance. Or you know when they went to you age, they had to work three jobs. It's just part and I know I sound utopian and I do sound like a second generation professor. And if we're going to address all the problems that you and I have talked about every Thursday. We have education has to at least be part of that. We have to have depth at least. But I want to get to 150,000 foot question. Sure. Back back in the day when think tech was very young. We had some administrator I can't remember who it was on our radio show. And he made a statement that has stuck with me all these years and it's this. All state. And the question is what what what should the scale of the biggest public research institution be. How big can it be. How big can this how big can it be for the state to support it. You know, it is less. I recall it was 1.5 billion coming from the state of Hawaii. That's a substantial percentage of the total state budget query. How big can it get. How much money can we afford in a larger state. No question. But we are a small state. How would you respond to that guy's comment. I would respond again, yes, true, but that doesn't mean we don't do what I like to say when people come and visit Honolulu. I like to say we have one of everything. We have one symphony, right. We don't have four symphonies. We have one wonderful art music. We don't have fun. We can have one solid research university. I think the answer to the administrator is that a major public university in a larger states, for example, might have three people to teach French art history. We can afford one person. So what we have is a major research university in which the intellectual competition within the university will be limited. We can't hire five people each month. All right, like Berkeley or UCLA can or at least could. But I see I don't buy that as a reason. One of the reasons I mentioned the phrase be everything is the current administration is echoing your former administrator, right. The current version of a small state is we can't be everything. That's the current version like that's the language use, but I don't. I mean when you when you have a university that starts cutting, you know, graduate programs in art history. It will probably not cut the sciences because there's a lot of federal money into the sciences. But you start cutting things with that as an excuse and the university is a living organism and you can prune a little bit, but you start clipping away that French art history inspires the biologist to improve the scientific illustrations. It enables a biologist to go as a representative of the state of Hawaii to a conference in Paris. These are not that not merely pie in the sky things. No, no, I totally agree. I totally agree. I do about the intellectual life of the state. We're talking about the intellectual life of each individual in the state. Our collective intellectual life, and we can dumb ourselves down. That's easy enough. But that's not the certainly not what we want. We want we want to have a high plane as high as anywhere in the country, right here. Anyway, the only path to that is through the University of Hawaii. That's as clear as a bell. Right. And also, I agree with you intellectually, but I also think that universities play a very important social role. They are a place where people have different views where people have absolutely no knowledge about something can come and that's from a zoom right it's you're not socializing. It's the significance of getting kids in the classroom, getting kids to sit with professors, having coffee and I don't mean an idealized way right they're going to be arguments, and they're going to be people who disagree that's part of life. But to do that in a relatively safe environment, fortunately it's still relatively safe. And that's a kind of social trickling, which helps us. Now the answer to the legislature is yes. The legislators of legislatures across the country, all have something fingers in the pie, right they all do so the idea the university can be completely free the legislators is not a reasonable response. But the legislature I think has to pick and choose the battles that mean more than just political points. So legislator going after 30 faculty members, because for example their research hasn't been completed. And that is a silly point making exercise. That's not an exercise which contributes in any way. It's not even a lot of money in any way. It's a way to make political points, and that I would like to stop I'd like to stop using the university for political points. Yes, absolutely. As long as I've been here though, quarter of a century. It is all it has been part of the DNA, at least for some people. And so my request would be that those who see it in the legislature, you don't have to necessarily be our cheerleaders, which is point out that the importance of having a university and the importance of picking and choosing significant university battles that really matter to the nature of the university and to the economy and most of these battles to me have been PR battles. Last, last question, Peter. You talked about folding towels in in like a key very troublesome career path. And and at the same time we're talking about raising the intellectual level of thought, you know, in the state. But but we still have a lot of graduates of the university who have done very well who have raised their level of intellectual thought who split. They go to the mainland because they'll get better jobs. They can use that training. They can use that education, the critical thinking in jobs on the mainland. So they go and they build families and we lose them. We lose them from our, you know, the gem in our crown, the, you know, the largest public research institution clearly in the state. So my thought is this, and I wonder about your thoughts on this, while we build the university, and I'm not talking about maintaining it, Peter. I'm talking about building it, making it bigger, better, spending more money. But more money in the university. It seems to me we have to look at the other side of the coin. And that is we have to build the economy to allow for entrepreneurship for new companies for global economic experiences here. So this becomes a magnet for business and a magnet for those kids who would otherwise be part of the brain train. So the, you know, the legislature has to do more. In my view, I'm interested in yours more than just support and expand and improve the university. It has to build an economy where the university's graduates have a place to go. What do you think? I think absolutely. I want to correct myself just before I answer you. When I mentioned folding towels, I mentioned that as the only option. So there's nothing wrong with folding towels. I want to be very careful. I just want the kid to be able to do something else that he wants to or she wants to. Absolutely. And when I talk about a major research university, I don't talk about an island that separated from the rest of society in both ways. Both the university contributing and no major research university can thrive without a larger community. So I'm not, I'm not talking about a monastery or mountain on the hill. I entirely agree with you. I also think though that the university's place where those ideas can be tossed about they can be tested. So you talk about entrepreneurship, promote that the difference perhaps in a university from what some of the legislators across the country are thinking. Is that university research often fails. My scientific research often fails. Humane's professors spend time researching and they don't get published. That's part of our life. So if the goal is, you know, immediate or relative immediate gratification and re-reneration, that's a mindset we have to think about changing. Most good entrepreneur ideas right take time. It takes time to develop to test, etc. So I'm all in keeping with you. Exactly. I would like the wider community and it's hard to think more along the lines and this gets connected to the tenure issue. More along the lines are universities need to be a place where folks can experiment and where failure will not in and of itself be held against you. Unless of course the reason for the failure, right? Obviously there could be some reasons in which the person should be out of the university. But the fact of a scientific experiment not working or the fact of a professor spending time in English researching a project and cannot find a publisher. That's no reason to fire them. That's no reason to end tenure. I mean, for business people think about more the traditional line that, for example, GE as a company would hire their own researchers, right? And provide semi-lifetime employment for researchers and therefore they could tinker around and get a light bulb that did not work. But they wouldn't lose their job. I mean, the goal was, as you say, to improve the economy, but to recognize that look, they're going to be, they're obviously going to be mistakes made. Yeah, I want to go to one more point because we have to go and that is something that you touched on. And that is, so we have the university. It's an important institution in our country. And we have these kids who might be leaving. But at the end of the day, they don't work well together because we don't attend to them together. And so, you know, I'm thinking that we have to do something about that. We have to... And at the end of the day, Peter, it is a political issue. It's a platform point for anybody running for office. How can we get them to understand this connection? How can we get them to understand that if Hawaii doesn't handle this collective bunch of issues, we will be backwater. This is a serious problem to attract the faculty, to encourage the faculty, to attract the students from various places in the world and to train them well and to try to keep them here. You know, this is a big, it's a big task. This is a big challenge on so many levels. So what's your advice to the legislature, all that considered? My advice for at least some of the legislature is come down. Go to a class in KCC. Go to a class in West Oatu. Come talk story with the professors and the graduate students. And make it less only a monetary issue and less a contentious union rep talks to legislature, legislature doesn't like the union rep. We have to somehow change, if you see the politics, we have to change the political interaction. And I think we both need to know. And professors like myself need to go to the legislature to try to understand better. We have really two different worlds. It's kind of a cultural battle. And it's not unique to here. We don't really have time. Maybe sometime else we can talk about tenure, but the reforms and even the removal of tenure is not reserved to Hawaii. That's a national issue and I'm happy to talk about that. It is a pivotal issue here to be just very briefly to give a professor who is qualified. He or she has jumped through the hoops. So tenure is not an easy thing. But upon granting tenure, there are not only additional responsibilities, but there is what you mentioned. There is the freedom to tinker around and say, well, you know, this might help the Hawaiian economy. I'm not going to lose my job. My study is wrong. Yeah, you know, that's and that's a great point to leave this discussion on, you know, it's like growing something. You water it, you provide nutrition. And you don't stand there and wait for it to flourish immediately. It's going to take a little time. These things take time growing a generation of smart kids who can find a way to stay here and help us produce a better economy. It takes time. And I think, you know, inherent, at least in my observation in the business community is if you want me to spend a dime, I want to see immediate results. And if you can't promise me immediate results, if you can demonstrate immediate results, I'm not going to invest in you. This is wrong thinking. When you're talking about an educational institution, it takes time. You have to grow it like a fine, a fine exotic plant. And you have to water it and care for it and love to it and sing to it. So let's all sing to the university. I appreciate that. No, very, very much. And that's a that's the kind of cultural issue we have to deal with. I don't mean culture in a dismissive way, but not one is right or one is wrong. But the idea of expectations and a sense of an investment. I mean, a university is an investment. But it's an investment which you say there will be some immediate returns. Sure, there always will be some, but it's the long term returns you want to look for. Yeah, thank you, Peter. Of course, my pleasure. Peter, I'm your history professor at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this discussion. Hope to see you soon. You will. Very good. Aloha. Thank you. Aloha. Thank you.