Our politicians have an obligation to provide us with accurate information, but too often they cloud issues to push their own agenda.

Fortunately, excellent reporting from Civil Beat’s Chad Blair has confirmed our suspicions of attempts by Sen. Donna Kim, chair of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, to unduly influence newly confirmed members of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents.

These regents claim, correctly, that legislators are entitled to raise questions about the UH administration, but the basis of these questions is supposedly complaints from anonymous sources, all actually originating from Kim, despite claims that she is not micromanaging the university.

She indeed has the right to ask hard questions to ensure taxpayers’ funds are being used appropriately by UH, but the questions and the way they are asked obscure her own role in creating the problems or her intent.

Kim’s questions and comments to these regents appear to be transparent tests of loyalty to her agenda rather than genuine inquiries. The regents, especially newly appointed ones, deserve the benefit of the doubt, and it is in the interest of the BOR and the University of Hawaii system to show by their decisions and actions that they are free of political manipulation.

As faculty, we have serious questions: How do we maintain the quality of teaching, research and community service at UH when it seems elements in the Legislature are working against our efforts to educate our youth and improve the state’s economic and social prospects?

We know our students and we are literally experts on education, economics, the environment, mental health and so on; would it not be better for our legislators to cooperate with rather than fight us?

What Research Shows

Building on Blair’s efforts toward transparency, the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly did some research and analysis of our own and learned that as chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, Kim’s accomplishments are few, and her complaints are often about situations for which she herself deserves blame.

For example, focusing on the sad state of the Hale Noelani dormitory during a budget informational briefing prevented the UH administration from presenting its budget for the year. Actually, Kim did not support funding for deferred maintenance projects to improve this same student housing.

If we are to have a world-class university system, we need advocates in the Legislature instead of critics trying to win points by pointing fingers. Our faculty still feel hurt by Kim’s attempt to eliminate more than 120 faculty positions, overstepping her role in the Legislature and violating our union contract.

Fortunately, she reversed her position, but blamed UH administrators for not providing her with sufficient information before she issued her announcement.

We would be happy to help her understand how research at major universities works, so that she does not make mistakes like that in the future.

At least, we could remind her that those scholars she has attacked bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding, leading efforts to save the islands from growing effects of climate change and to cure cancer, to name just a couple of areas of significant UH research.

Kim’s current term does not end until 2027, so for the sake of UH and the well-being of our state’s educational system, we ask that she be accurate and realistic in her approach and that she and our other elected officials be held to the highest standards of transparency, accountability and responsibility.

As educators, we constantly ask ourselves how to improve the quality of education, and it would be great if Kim and her colleagues are deeply honest about how they may have contributed to the problems by what they do or did not do.

Our Legislature holds great power over the University of Hawaii system through budget funding and its confirmation of UH regents. Therefore, it can either assist in helping our children get a great education and build the state’s economy, or it can impede progress, with our best and brightest youth heading off to the mainland for their productive adult lives.

We need more policymakers in our Legislature with visionary leadership who can work collaboratively with aloha to make the UH and our state better.