Since January 2025, the Trump administration has enacted a sweeping range of policy shifts through anti-DEI executive orders and the termination of existing funding commitments in many areas, including education, the arts, and the humanities.

Members of this panel will share how their individual organisations have been negatively impacted by these recent policies. The panel will also discuss the specific challenges they have faced in these policies’ wake, and their implications for academia at large.

Biographies

Halena Kapuni-Reynolds

Dr Halena Kapuni-Reynolds was born on the island of Hawai'i and raised in the Hawaiian Home Lands community of Keaukaha and the rainforest of ʻŌlaʻa. As the Associate Curator of Native Hawaiian History and Culture at the National Museum of the American Indian, a unit of the Smithsonian Institution, he works on an array of projects centered around exhibitions, public programs, and public service. Dr Kapuni-Reynolds also serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities, where he has contributed to the establishment of the Pacific Islands Humanities Network (PIHN) and provided leadership for the organization during a time of crisis and change. In addition to these roles, Dr Kapuni-Reynolds has served as a board member for the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management, the Hawaiʻi Museums Association, the Council for Museum Anthropology, and the Piʻilani Hawaiian Civic Club of Colorado.

Rosie Rowe

Rosie Rowe is the Executive Director of Leadership in Disabilities & Achievement of Hawai`i (LDAH), a 501(c)3 organisation improving the lives of parents and their children with, or at risk of disabilities to receive an equitable education in the public-school system. Before this role, Ms Rowe served as the Education & Training Coordinator, where she managed the organisation’s two major programs, wrote, and designed training curriculum for parents and professionals and managed ten programme staff. She holds a master’s degree in business administration/ministry leadership and a certificate in developmental disabilities. As a sibling of a brother with down syndrome and a mom to three adult daughters, Ms Rowe has over 30 years of expertise in special education as a former Educational Assistant, Teacher, and Administrator of a private non-profit centre for children and adults with developmental disabilities. In her role as administrator, she assisted with the closure of Hawai’i’s State Institution for the Mentally Retarded within Waimano Training School and Hospital in 1999. Today, she manages three federal grants, four local government contracts, and one private grant under LDAH. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, walking, and staying active.

Mary Therese Perez Hattori

A Chamorro of the island of Guahan (Guam), Dr Mary Therese Perez Hattori is one of nine children born to Fermina Leon Guerrero Perez and Paul Mitsuo Hattori, of the clan Familian Titang. She is the former director of the Pacific Islands Development Program, and now serves as affiliate graduate faculty with the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and Chaminade University of Honolulu in the fields of educational leadership, educational technologies, Indigenous leadership, Indigenous research, and Pacific Islands studies. A resident in Hawai'i since 1983, she is an author, community organiser, poet, public speaker, and a consultant with a passion for empowering Pacific Islander communities through the arts, education, and technology.

About the Presenter(s)
-Dr Halena Kapuni-Reynolds was born on the island of Hawai'i and raised in the Hawaiian Home Lands community of Keaukaha and the rainforest of ʻŌlaʻa.
-Rosie Rowe is the Executive Director of Leadership in Disabilities & Achievement of Hawai`i (LDAH), a 501(c)3 organisation improving the lives of parents and their children with, or at risk of disabilities to receive an equitable education in the public-school system.
-A Chamorro of the island of Guahan (Guam), Dr Mary Therese Perez Hattori is one of nine children born to Fermina Leon Guerrero Perez and Paul Mitsuo Hattori, of the clan Familian Titang.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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