High Quality Policy-Oriented Research is the Core Mission

We are heartened that U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and Hawaii’s congressional delegation successfully steered some $17 million for the East-West Center for the current fiscal year ending in September.

However, the center needs to treat this funding as a temporary reprieve. Looking toward next year’s fiscal budget in October 2014, we see a critical juncture for the center to build uniqueness to survive. Remember, the U.S. State Department itself has always budgeted only $10.8 million for the center.

The East-West Center must once again be put on a sustainable path with global influence.

Research and education — these two programs are the cornerstones of the EWC, or at least they were. The EWC has lost the commitment to both and replaced it with a "new business model," as stated by the EWC president and board chairman. But it is not a new business model. It is an old excuse for killing the center’s world-class research capabilities and doing away with the core of the education program — the graduate students.

To continue to justify nearly $17 million provided by Congress, the EWC needs to return to being a "center" for respected thinkers and students to do in-depth research not being provided elsewhere. The researchers/student bond of integrated research, which is now deliberately broken, must be re-established.

The center’s once-reputable graduate program of 80-100 students has been replaced with one that offers only a few graduate-degree fellowships. While some of the short-term leadership programs are well respected, they should not come at the expense of the core graduate program.

As former long-term staff of the EWC, we can say first-hand that there is a serious disconnect between the board and EWC staff. We urge board members to reconnect with staff; they will come away with an entirely different view of the current environment at the center.

As a publicly funded institution, the center needs to be fully transparent. Salaries and contract terms of key management and consultants must be made public; their travel expenses, as well as the budget, must be open. This lack of transparency raises many questions. For instance, one year before the president’s contract was to expire in August 2011, the outgoing board extended him for five additional years with a "golden parachute." We have asked for details but have been told this is between the board and the president. Even now, it is a secret. Why?

For many years, EWC board members were forward thinkers and knew that for the center to survive, it required proper leadership and accountability. The East-West Center Corporation Act has specific mandates that the EWC shall have a board that "shall manage and control the affairs of the corporation and shall exercise all of the power of the corporation." However, when the board is not transparent in the face of staff and public questions, it becomes ineffective.

The board should reestablish an International Advisory Board to advise on "programmatic matters." The current president discontinued the peer review of the International Advisory Panel many years ago after a negative review.

Today almost every public institution has a strong private-sector following, for programs of substantive value to that private sector. Why has the center failed in establishing such programs?

The president claims the EWC has a huge sum of non-appropriated dollars — given by global governments or agencies to the EWC for administering specific projects — of about $15 million yearly. But the center serves mainly as manager of these funds for others; this is pass-through money that the EWC cannot use to bolster other programs or staffing when its public budget gets cut. We challenge the EWC, as a public institution, to open the books and show where these non-appropriated funds come from.

With the hollowing out of the research program and diminishing graduate education program, the substance is gone and replaced by process, poor leadership and excessive micromanagement.

It is no longer possible to hide our head in the sand and pretend that everything is wonderful at EWC! It is time for the board to exercise its fiduciary duty and act with openness to save the future of the center. It is time for dialogue, not monologue.