Friends of the Department

The Department of Philosophy has connections with many individuals, foundations, departments and institutions around the world and on the Mānoa campus. Thanks to the tireless work of our faculty and staff and the support of extremely generous donors and the University, the Department has been able to produce a notably wide range of research projects – both practical and theoretical – in philosophy. Below is a list of friends of the Department who continue to support this work.

Donors
Roger and Bonnie Ames

David Hall Prize (Best Undergraduate Essay)
The David Hall Prize provides funding for an expenses-paid trip to read the prize-winning essay at the Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, held annually in Oneonta, NY.

Marcia Roberts-Deutsch

Eliot Deutsch Merit Award (Best PhD Proposal Defense)

MARCIA ROBERTS-DEUTSCH (Marcia Morse) completed her undergraduate work with honors at Harvard University, she spent two-and-a-half years living in Quito, Ecuador, where she began her study of printmaking. She received her MFA in Printmaking at Stanford University before returning to the islands. She completed her PhD in Political Science at UH-Manoa in 2012, with research focused on the gender politics of performance art. She was tenured as a Professor of Art at Honolulu Community College, served for five years as Dean of Liberal Arts at the college, and as Accreditation Liaison for the community college system before retiring in December 2018 as Professor Emerita. She married UH Professor Emeritus Eliot Deutsch in 1988.

As Marcia Morse she has been active as an artist, art critic and freelance curator. She has participated in numerous solo, small group, juried and invitational exhibitions, and is represented in several private and corporate collections in the U.S., Japan and Europe. Her work since 2004 involves an ongoing series of mixed media prints, Women in Black, exploring the role of women, and particularly women in the Islamic world, in contemporary geopolitics.

Ashok Malhotra

Seva Award (Academic Excellence and Community Service)
This award recognizes undergraduate and graduate students who combine academic excellence and community service.

Dr. Ashok Kumar Malhotra is Emeritus SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York College at Oneonta. He has won numerous awards, among them the East West Center Distinguished Alumni Award (USA), University of Hawaii Distinguished Alumni Award (USA), and Jewel of India Gold Award (India). To recognize individuals who have performed outstanding community service locally, nationally or globally, he established four Ashok Malhotra SEVA (Compassionate Service) Awards for the faculty and students at SUNY Oneonta as well as at the East West Center, Hawaii and University of Hawaii at Manoa. Furthermore, he is the founder/president of the Ninash Foundation (www.ninash.org), a charity that has built 7 schools for more than 1800 female and minority children of India. To recognize his charitable work for the underprivileged children of India, he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2010.

Pat Whittingslow

Keith Whittingslow Prize (Best Graduate Essay)
Established by Pat Whittingslow in memory of her husband Keith Whittingslow, this prize is awarded for an outstanding essay written by a graduate student in the Philosophy Department. Keith was a good friend of the Department and a passionate participant in many seminars until his passing in 2015. Keith had an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Consciousness Studies from J. F. Kennedy University in Orinda, CA. He was particularly interested in Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Neuroscience, Linguistics, and Field Theory.

Ruth Kleinfeld

For more than a decade, Dr. Ruth Kleinfeld (1928-2021), Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Reproductive Biology at UH Mānoa, attended undergraduate and graduate classes in the Department including courses in Chinese, Japanese, and Indian Philosophy, as well as courses in the philosophy of art. Dr. Kleinfeld supported many of the Department’s endeavors over this period. She contributed funds year-after-year to support graduate student travel with the Kleinfeld-Lenney Travel Award. She also sponsored p4c and the Department’s annual graduate student conference. Dr. Kleinfeld was enthusiastic in her support faculty and student research, and through a number of generous contributions made possible the development and recent foundation of the Department’s EPOCH Project. Below is a memorial note penned by EPOCH’s supervisor, Professor Arindam Chakrabarti.

Remembering Ruth Lenney Kleinfeld (1928-2021)

Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education

In its devotion to the enhancement of educational environments by the promotion of a diverse range of approaches to ethical issues, the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education has been a generous donor to many of the Department’s interdependent endeavors for many years. The p4c Hawai‘i movement has benefitted greatly from the support of the Uehiro Foundation over the years. Most recently, a generous increase in support to p4c Hawai‘i has made possible the creation of the UHM Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education. In addition to this, the Foundation has supported the East-West Philosophers’ Conference – held on the topic of philosophy of education in 2005 – the Department’s Uehiro Graduate Philosophy Conference, and an annual essay award.

Collaborating Departments
Peking University

UHM has had a funded faculty exchange agreement with Peking University for more than a quarter of a century where every year two of their faculty teach on our campus, and the equivalent of two faculty (24 months) are available to UHM faculty and graduate students to conduct research at Peking University. Several of our faculty (Ames, Tanke) teach regularly on the Peking University campus.

Renmin University

UHM has hosted a delegation of 17 members of the philosophy department of the People’s University of China in 2012, and agreed to different kinds of collaboration. For example, several members of our department have been teaching courses at Renda (Albertini, Ames, Cheng).

Shandong University

UHM has signed an agreement to facilitate exchanges between our two institutions. At present we are committed to hosting a joint conference every second year. The first conference on “Confucianism and Social Justice” was held in Jilin in 2012, and a second conference on “Confucianism as World Philosophy” will be held in Honolulu in October 2014.

University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy (UTCP)

The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy is a cutting-edge international research center in Japan. In addition to the various collaborations between individual faculty members from both institutions, the department of philosophy at UHM runs formal philosophy programs in co-operation with UTCP.

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Area Centers

The UHM area centers in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and South Asian studies provide tremendous support to philosophy students in the way of conferences, scholarships, graduate assistantships, and diversely qualified faculty members.

Center for Chinese Studies
Center for Japanese Studies
Center for Korean Studies
Center for South Asian Studies
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Language Departments

Given the emphasis the department places on language proficiency in its students, most UHM philosophy students will work with one or more of the excellent language departments on campus and their committed faculty members. 

East Asian Languages and Literatures
Chinese; Japanese; Korean

Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures
Arabic; Hindi; Pali; Sanskrit

Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas
French; German; Greek; Latin