One way for us to carve a new way forward culturally and economically is to spotlight Hawaii not just as a wonderful place to visit, but as the right place for examining and solving the world’s problems. This is a dynamic role we should embrace.
The 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit showed that Hawaii can host world-class events safely and with aloha. Last week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel invited regional defense ministers to hold their annual meeting in Hawaii, a sign that our islands can play a critical role in America’s strategic rebalancing to Asia.
I’m hopeful that we will eventually be able to make another big announcement: that President Barack Obama has decided to build a presidential center in Honolulu.
All recent presidents have created institutions after leaving office. The public is most familiar with presidential libraries, which house the president’s official papers and make them available to the public. But over time, presidential centers have accrued other components, including foundation headquarters (such as the Carter Center in Atlanta) and public affairs institutes (notably, the Kennedy School at Harvard). These components add up. The Clinton Foundation now has some 2,000 employees. The opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas in May capped a $500 million fundraising drive.
The University of Hawaii, in cooperation with nonprofit, business, government and community leaders, has been leading this effort. The project’s leadership team members have sent fact-finders to almost every presidential center in the country. They have worked closely with the state administration and the Hawaii Community Development Authority to set aside a beautiful site in Kakaako Makai. They have hosted sessions with educators, artists, business and community leaders, and they organized an inaugural gala to introduce their ideas to a national audience. From my vantage point in Washington, this is no longer an impossible dream. We are putting together a genuinely competitive proposal.
The project’s leaders have developed a compelling vision for a presidential center in Hawaii. Their premise is that President Obama will be interested in creating an institution that looks forward to the future, that embodies Hawaii’s values and that has a global outlook.
One proposal is to establish an institute that would advance collaborative, Hawaii-style solutions to some of the great challenges of our time, like energy dependence, food insecurity and climate change. Combining the president’s power to bring people together with the research capacity of UH, the institute would invite experts, stakeholders and decision-makers to craft workable solutions. But it would then go a step beyond most think tanks by launching community-based initiatives to give those solutions life. Their vision is to create a university-affiliated institution that would combine thought and action.
The leadership team is also proposing that an Obama center include a more-ambitious set of educational programs than exists at any other presidential center. The focus would be on civic education and public service, and the goal would be to cultivate a new generation of community leaders. Through after-school and in-school programs, summer institutes, teacher development workshops and online learning, the hope is to make meaningful engagements in children’s lives while also developing templates for civic education programs that could be implemented across the United States.
As a presidential center would most likely be constructed near the Kakaako shoreline, it can also serve as a model for sustainability and responsible building in the age of rising sea levels. The intention is to design structures that include advanced energy generation and conservation technologies and disaster resiliency features, so that an Obama center would raise the bar for all sorts of coastal construction projects.
We don’t know precisely what components of an Obama presidential center could conceivably end up in Hawaii. But getting everyone involved — that’s the Hawaii way. We sometimes need to dream a little bigger — and if we continue to work together, we might just make those dreams come true.
