Oppose the Appointment of Lt. General Wiercinski to the UH Presidency

Members of the University of Hawai’i Board of Regents,

As faculty members and students at the University of Hawaiʻi, we have attended or watched online the presentations by both finalists for the position of UH President: Lt. General Francis J. Wiercinski and David Lassner.  Having heard both candidates speak and examining their backgrounds, we write to you to strenuously object to the Lt. General Wiercinski’s candidacy.  He is clearly unqualified to lead the University of Hawaiʻi in a way that is consistent with the University’s core mission, including its commitments to developing first rate research, to enabling high-quality teaching, and to operating as an educational community that foregrounds Hawaiian values.  

We have several substantial objections to Wiercinski as a candidate; we believe that any one of them make him not viable as a candidate.

1)  Lt. General Wiercinski is entirely lacking in experience in academe. Would it even be thinkable to suggest that a highly-respected university administrator be appointed as a general of the US Army with no military experience? Why is the reverse acceptable? There is nothing in his service record that suggests academic pursuit or any familiarity with public educational institutions. Indeed, the Lt. General's highest degree is a BS in Engineering from West Point. He has never held a post that requires thinking about education, research or pedagogy. In fact, he has absolutely no experience with these key facets of the university, nor does he have any experience in educational leadership, and his talk suggested little interest in learning about these core elements of university life. Wiercinski was unable or unwilling to acknowledge any fundamental difference in the purposes and cultures of the university and the military. Instead, he equated the two simply as “systems.” Arguing for his qualifications, he stated that because he ran a billion-dollar system, he knows how to get resources to the organizations he leads. But, and this is but one of many fundamental differences, the US federal government willing pours billions of dollars into military funding, making it a completely different situation than trying to raise funding for public, higher education in an era in which state funding for universities has been steadily declining.

2) In keeping with his lack of experience, Lt. General Wiercinski’s cliche-ridden presentation indicated no signs that he would make an adequate, or even minimally competent, president of our university system. He did not present any specific visions or approaches as to how he would support the actualization of the strategic plan for the UH system. Instead he relied upon sweeping generalizations about leadership.  It made many of us wonder, has he even read the strategic plan? Has he done his homework? When asked about the issue of academic freedom, he clearly had no familiarity with debates raging across the country concerning this topic; the most he could say was that in the United States “we are blessed to possess academic freedom” because unlike in other countries, girls can attend school. Furthermore, his comments revealed an approach to leadership that, while it might work in the military, is decidedly at odds with a university and its commitments to critical inquiry and intellectual pursuit. Instead of speaking to the issue of academic freedom in a substantive way, he fell back on an answer that showed how fully he is situated in the military when he stated,  "I swore an oath to protect your freedom."

He did not seem to acknowledge or appreciate that people in education--including the very people who were voicing dissent at his talk--are defending meaningful freedom everyday. Nor does his leadership style seem to allow for the exercise of democratic processes and critical debate. While stressing the importance of “collegiality,” he made it clear that he was defining this quality as the ability to follow the plan put forth by the 5-6 people (with himself as general) who were in the “span of control”. In other words, his idea of collegiality is following the chain of command. A vibrant university needs to be one in which faculty and students have governance and one in which criticisms and debates can flourish.

We also have serious concerns about how this candidate would approach pressing issues of safety in regards to  sexual harassment and assault. The military’s problems in addressing a culture in which sex crimes are rife is well-established, and Lt. General Wiercinski’s track record is weak even within that institution. Lt. General Wiercinski supervised US military operations in Japan and Okinawa at a time when the court-martialing of those accused of sex crimes in the military was significantly lower in his area of command than in others throughout the world. Between 2005 - 2013, the overall rate of court-martials of accused sex offenders in the military had gone up by 64 percent. However, in Japan and Okinawa, the increase was only 24 percent. Moreover, the recommendation of non-judicial action and meaningless reprimands for sex crimes, like being confined to base, was highest in Japan and Okinawa. While Wiercinski went on record as saying that sexual assaults were a number one priority and that one assault was too many, his record gives us pause. It suggests that he is more comfortable with business as usual than he is committed to change.

3) In addition to an approach to leadership that draws so exclusively on his military orientation and background, as president he would contribute to the militarization of the university. As evidence of this, he referenced the US government’s Asia-Pacific pivot on multiple occasions during the talk and repeatedly asserted that Hawai‘i needed to be the “center of gravity” in this shift.

In 2005, the Mānoa Faculty Senate, the Associate Students of the University of Hawaiʻi, and the Kualiʻi Council, the Pūkoʻa Council, the UH System Student Caucus, the Faculty Senate of Hawaiʻi Community College and the Faculty Senate of the College of Arts and Sciences at UH Hilo, together with communities beyond the university, voiced tremendous opposition to and passed resolutions against the proposal for the US Navy University-Affiliated Research Center (UARC) and the militarization of the university. The Save UH/Stop UARC Coalition demanded a withdrawal of UARC proposal and organized a six day sit-in at Bachman Hall in the UH President David McClain’s office. The university, through a process that was far from transparent, went ahead and renewed a contract with the military in 2013, despite the fact we do not know what that research is about.  We strongly oppose opening the door wider to further militarization of this institution.

Although Lt. General Wiercinski maintained in his response to questions that there is no conflict of interest between his military career and the Hawaiian values that form the core of the UH mission statement, his history indicates otherwise. The value he professed in his talk for mālama ʻāina is contradicted by his support for live-fire training in places like Mākua and Pōhakuloa, which are both considered sacred places to Hawaiians. In an article in the Star Advertiser on June 18, 2011, Wiercinski is reported as saying that although he did not want to resume live-fire training at Mākua Valley, he would not rule that out as an option if the training ranges at Pōhakuloa and Schofield Barracks were not completed in time. In other words, he was only willing to stop live fire exercises once he had another location. Furthermore, he said his top priority was training; Hawaiian sacred sites came second.

In his UHM talk, he also presented the military as a humanitarian institution, and gave no indication that he understands let alone is willing to consider the contradictions and problems that come with such an assertion. The Lt. General’s inability to think critically about distinctions between a military and educational institution make him not only unsuitable for academic leadership, but also a threat to the most basic purposes of higher education.

4) Finally, the Lt. General brings no qualifications to the table regarding the social, cultural and historical specificities of working in Hawai‘i, and at an institution that has made being “a Hawaiian place of learning” part of its core mission. Wiercinski showed that he lacks even the most elementary understanding of the complex dynamics of ethnic and racial issues in the islands, let alone awareness of basic demographics that can be gleaned by a quick trip to the  UH system website. Despite having lived in Hawai‘i for several years, he still confused the category “Hawaiian” for all people who reside in Hawaiʻi. When someone from the audience called out that “Hawaiian” is not the same as “Texan” or “Iowan,” Wiercinski did not address the point. Indeed, he provided no evidence that he understands the diverse strengths and challenges of our university system, nor of the broader Hawaiʻi community. The few Hawaiian words he peppered into his talk gave no indication that he knows how to lead our institution toward a fuller realization of our mission as a Hawaiian place of learning or an Indigenous-serving institution. In fact, his cavalier and often misapplied use of words like “pono” and “mālama ʻāina,” coupled with his lack of acknowledging the Indigenous people of these islands, show a profound disrespect for Kānaka Maoli and for all of us in this university community.  

For these reasons and more, we strongly urge you to reject Lt. General Wiercinski as a candidate for president of the University of Hawaiʻi system.

Sincerely,