I am writing this commentary as one who has been associated with the University of Hawaii for 56 years as a student, teacher, legislator, member of Congress and governor.

In our university system, the least enviable of all positions in a condition of rapidly decreasing financial support and increasing pressure to slash programs and personnel is that of vice chancellor for academic affairs.

This is especially true at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the wake of massive legislative cuts in the tens of millions of dollars. The chancellor may be the one establishing and articulating policy, but it is the vice chancellor who is tasked with turning the fiscal bad news into cold reality at the classroom and faculty levels.

In a classic case of attacking the messenger rather than addressing the conditions and circumstances that cause the unwanted message to arrive, Vice Chancellor Reed Dasenbrock has been personally vilified as a bully, a sexist and a racist by some of those whose positions and/or programs were affected.

By way of background qualifications, Dasenbrock‘s bachelor of arts degree is from McGill University and his master’s and doctorate degrees are from Johns Hopkins University. He is the author or editor of eight books and 100-plus scholarly articles, is a member of the executive committee of the Modern Language Association and, most pertinently, a commissioner of the Western Interstate Compact for Higher Education (WICHE).

The sole purpose of WICHE is to ensure that Hawaii students have access to academic disciplines not offered in Hawaii. WICHE and Dasenbrock make certain no local student is prevented from pursuing her or his educational goals because of Hawaii’s geographical isolation.

In the course of the last 15 years, Dasenbrock has been a dean of arts and sciences, provost, Cabinet secretary for higher education to Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico — and now he has served longer as UHM vice chancellor than any vice chancellor, Manoa chancellor or UH president since the role of president and chancellor were separated. More than six years.

In all that time, with all of the tough decisions he has rendered, with all the issues concerning personnel, programs and policy he has confronted, in all the individual and collective faculty, staff and student interaction with which he has engaged, not a single complaint was ever registered against him.

Within a university context, the vice chancellor is perhaps the most “public” figure because of the implications of her/his decisions for faculty, staff and students. How it possible that these offenses attributed to Dasenbrock have only now been discovered? These offenses are cited as “longstanding” by one commentary — but are only now being cited.

How is it possible to have a bullying, sexist, racist agenda as vice chancellor and successfully mask it for six years?

I suggest there is an agenda, and it is not one of the vice chancellor’s making.

I suggest those making these accusations look at the institutional and political forces which have battered the University of Hawaii in recent years, particularly in the push-and-pull of drastically reduced state funding. I suggest that silence in the university and broader community in the face of attempted intimidation by invective only encourages more of it.

And, most especially, I suggest critics look in the mirror and see whether any element of what they accuse the vice chancellor is, perhaps, lurking in their own pronouncements and commentary.

Neil Abercrombie was governor of Hawaii from 2010 to 2014.