In October of 2014, construction was set to begin for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii. The mountain is considered sacred by Native Hawaiians and construction was quickly halted due to protests. Scientists claim that Mauna Kea is an ideal site for the TMT due to its geographical location and climate. This July, it was announced that construction would begin again. The protestors returned and since then, there have been blockades halting construction on the mountain.
Hui O Na Moku, Stanford’s Pacific Islander coalition, has been protesting the TMT since summer with a focus on the Moore Foundation—a Stanford benefactor and one of the largest funders of the TMT. The group organized rallies in White Plaza and a blockade to the entrances of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation parking lot, as well as a protest outside the private estate of the Moore family.
“We’re trying to find a way to respectfully come into their space to make ourselves known, but do it assertively and uncompromising,” said Keoni Rodriguez, a leader in Hui O Na Moku’s anti-TMT campaign.
Stanford is a member of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), which supports the construction of the TMT. Students of these member universities have been circulating a petition to denounce AURA’s support. Emails with phrases such as “violent act of colonialism” and “desecration of sacred land” urge action and sympathy, and it’s understandable why students may feel the desire to immediately take action. However, do these recruited students fully understand the historical and social implications of the issue? To what extent do students need to be familiar with an issue before becoming involved?
On Oct 31, there was an event titled “Mana ‘O Maunakea,” hosted by the NACC. Speaker Lanakila Mangauil, who is a renowned Kumu Hula, or expert hula teacher, was touring the Bay Area and had just spoken to Berkeley students earlier that day. Mangauil discussed native perspectives on the TMT issue and taught the group chants and dances to “feed” the group since they were doing such important work with the Moore foundation. Managauil spoke a generous amount of Hawaiian and at times spoke in thick pidgin accent. He spoke of the immense suffering of the Hawaiian people, and how connected the Hawaiian people are to the Mauna. The audience repeated chants entirely in Hawaiian, one of which was about the regrowth that occurs following Pele’s destruction. The Kumu Hula taught a hula, and a mixture of elegant and rigid hips swayed to the mele. At the end of the program, the audience collectively sang an Oli Mahalo to the speaker. This event was an authentic bonding experience within the Stanford Native Hawaiian community, providing an opportunity to practice empowering traditions and to hear about the pain and resilience of their people. For someone without a Native Hawaiian background, it would have been extremely easy to feel out of place and to feel as though your opinion regarding the construction of the TMT would be illegitimate.
I grew up surrounded by Native Hawaiian people, stories, and traditions, and growing up on Oahu is a huge part of my identity. From feeling genuine anger during my 4th grade Big Island field trip when it started to rain after a classmate plucked an Ohia Lehua flower, to preparing Ti leaves for cooking Lau Lau every New Year’s Eve, the culture has become entwined with my childhood memories. However, as someone with an extremely diverse ethnic background, I don’t strongly embrace my Native Hawaiian heritage. I grew up Christian, so I don’t have a religious relationship with Maunakea. I understand the mountain’s importance, but I don’t have a strong connection to it. As I observed activism at Stanford on the issue, I became interested in how a student without ties to Hawaii would perceive the issue. It became apparent that not every recruited activist understood both sides of the TMT issue and the nuances behind it. I was frustrated because these activists without ties to Hawaii didn’t have to live with the consequences and implications of the TMT, and I was driven to examine uninformed activism at Stanford as a whole.
Defaulting to supporting the beliefs of people of color as a result of feeling like an outsider is not a phenomenon unique to this movement, or to Stanford. Often students who come from less diverse or representative parts of the country go to college and are introduced to an environment in which people of color have a much larger voice. Stanford is significantly more diverse than the general U.S. population, with White students making up 36% of the undergraduate student body (Note: This statistic does not include international students who make up 10% of the undergraduate population). In comparison, the U.S. Census reports that 76.5% of the population is White. Both data sets include White Latinx in its “White” category. Although the proportion of White students is smaller on campus, the group still makes up a larger portion of the undergraduate population than any other ethnic demographic. Nani Friedman ‘20, a founding member of Stanford Coalition for Planning an Equitable 2035 (SCoPE 2035), an advocacy group for equitable outcomes from Stanford’s application for a new General Use Permit (GUP), expressed that the burden of defining a “social justice perspective,” “often falls on students of color demanding recognition in spaces in which they don’t receive it.”
“I do think that other students who don’t share those same identities do depend on that,” Friedman said.
“Certainly we can’t learn about everything; making an environment for ourselves where we know when things implicate us might be a good thing to do,” said Emilee Chapman, an assistant professor of Political Science at Stanford. Chapman, who is co-teaching the undergraduate course “Ethics for Activists” this winter, observed that people will often trust others to tell them how to respond to an issue.
However, “it is really important to make sure the person you’re following is trustworthy and are themselves in a position to know what’s going on,” Chapman said. “The complexity of that is that we’re not always good at knowing who is trustworthy and we tend to be susceptible to all kinds of biases.”
Stanford’s lack of discourse may be attributed to the campus’ overwhelming liberal majority. Stanford Marriage Pact’s 2018 Campus Report revealed that 63.1% of respondents identified as a Democrat, with only 7.1% identifying as Republican. Ravi Jacques ‘20, the founder of The Stanford Sphere, a leftist newspaper designed to diversify campus discourse, described Stanford’s student body as largely “liberally defined but without any strong convictions.”
“Liberal consensus really hurts activism itself because politics is ultimately a strategic game,” Jacques said. “You have to approach it with a strategic mind, and you don’t do that if you’ve already won. If everyone agrees with you, you don’t have to persuade anyone. It’s just not conducive to good political thinking.”
Chapman said you shouldn’t necessarily remain neutral just because you don’t know enough about a topic. Our society is so interconnected, that even if an issue is relatively distant from you, your “neutral” stance may make you complicit. One example Chapman cited was when your taxes fund government efforts that you may deem unethical. “That puts us in a moral position where we can’t maintain a neutral stance towards lots of things because the things that we do are going to affect what happens regardless,” said Chapman.
For some activist groups on campus, using uninformed students is a necessity. In SCoPE, Friedman is challenged with organizing people for an issue that’s complex and requires a robust understanding of land-use policies. However, in order to promote collective action and to demonstrate communal dissatisfaction, it’s important to have bodies.
“We have a lot of people who are going to be indifferent so we need people who are not fully informed to work with us and be on our side,” Friedman said. “Do I think that that’s the best thing for critical understanding of social justice in our generation? No.”
Joining an activist group requires not knowledge, but interest. “If the individual doesn’t educate themselves but has an interest, I don’t think that lack of education should be shamed,” Friedman said. “Education should be encouraged, but lack of education shouldn’t be shamed.”
“Every good political movement needs to gather a lot of people,” Jacques said. “In any successful political movement, you’re going to have a large mass who do follow. That doesn’t mean they’re not thoughtful people themselves, but you need to build up this critical mass to make change.”
Activist groups aren’t necessarily responsible for providing a comprehensive background of an issue when recruiting people to join their causes. It may not be in an organization’s best interest to communicate the opposing side’s perspective of an issue. One reason for this is that trying to create a narrative of two arguments of comparable weight is sometimes unproductive and creates the illusion of equivalence.
“For example, in the abolition movement, if you were to try to create a balanced argument you might hit state’s rights or property rights on one side, against the rights of human beings to live free on the other,” Chapman said. But, Chapman acknowledged, “There are limits as to what people can conceal or exaggerate about their case to get people on their side.” Because of this, having a thorough understanding of an issue falls on the individual rather than activist groups.
Another reason that a group may not be responsible for presenting an opposing viewpoint is that it’s already well-understood or effectively circulated. This perception informs SCoPE’s messaging, as the organization works to hold Stanford accountable for the housing crisis in surrounding neighborhoods.
“Stanford has more resources available to them in order to dominate the narratives around the issue through ads,” Friedman said. “They’re able to get their story out so effectively, I have no problem not mentioning their side at our teach-ins.” Activist groups are often pushing against policies and norms set by powerful people, and expressing their point of view is often going to be their priority.
Hui O Na Moku’s campaign, which protests the construction of the TMT on Maunakea, uses methods that are heavily connected to the Hawaiian culture to educate people about their cause. Their “biggest thing is storytelling—just telling people where we come from and our own personal experience,” said Keoni Rodriguez. He added that the campaign is “committed to ceremony, so we did ceremonies involving chants, songs, and prayers” when engaging in demonstrations.
For the purposes of Hui O Na Moku’s cause, the organization’s approach makes sense. However, most students at Stanford aren’t confronted with the implications of the Mauna Kea telescope. The TMT will primarily influence Hawaii’s economy, leaving most students thousands of miles away from the state unaffected. For example, the TMT is projected to generate 300 local and specialized union construction jobs and create 140 STEM positions when operational. This is a significant addition to a city ranked 86th out of the largest 100 cities in the United States for professional STEM opportunities. Additionally, students may not know what the public opinion in Hawaii is regarding the telescope. As of September 27, 2019, half of all voters in a Hawaii Star-Advertiser Poll said they support building the TMT. Of course, this is not representative of the Native Hawaiian population, of whom 62% oppose construction. However, these numbers demonstrate that there’s a larger debate to be had and that there are other valid opinions on the issue. Regardless if one concludes that the cultural significance of Maunakea outweighs other benefits, it is still important to know of these benefits before making a stance on the issue. On Stanford’s campus, discourse on the TMT isn’t easily accessible, making it understandable that students would support the anti-TMT campaign without also understanding the nuances of the issue.
Allies without natural ties to Hawaii are important to Hui O Na Moku’s anti-TMT campaign. However, it’s also important to have an understanding of your campaign’s implications, especially when it doesn’t necessarily affect you. But it is not an organization’s responsibility to educate students on opposing viewpoints, which makes blind activism dangerous. How much trust are we willing to give to the viewpoints of an activist group?
Blindly supporting a minority group doesn’t make you woke. It’s easy to advocate for marginalized people’s causes because we know of the historical injustice and the adversity these groups face to this day. However, the burden of distinguishing right from wrong can’t solely fall on people of color. These perspectives should be highly respected and valued, but they can’t be left uncontested. We can acknowledge that our understanding of an issue may be different because we come from different backgrounds, but we can’t automatically default to adopting another perspective. It’s neither productive to discourse nor activism.
Sierra Burgon, a sophomore, is a staff writer for Stanford Politics.