BYU–Hawaii President John S. K. Kauwe III. Courtesy of BYU–Hawaii Communications.

ABSTRACT: This interview with President Kauwe traces Kauwe’s path from his time as a student at BYU to his appointment as the eleventh president of BYU–Hawaii. Kauwe shares insights into his Hawaiian heritage, academic and professional accomplishments, and his aspirations for the university. He underscores the vital role of faculty in building students’ confidence, the distinct intercultural setting of BYU–Hawaii, and the centrality of the gospel in education. Reflecting on the rapid progression of his career, Kauwe also speaks about the importance of following divine guidance in our lives. The interview captures his dedication to promoting intercultural harmony and his deep testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

KEYWORDS: education, diversity, faith, teaching the gospel

Fred Woods: John “Keoni” S. K. Kauwe III [is] the eleventh president of BYU–Hawaii [and] is also currently serving as an Area Authority Seventy. . . . Dr. Kauwe is an internationally recognized researcher specializing in Alzheimer’s disease genetics. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at BYU [in] Provo. He then completed his PhD at Washington University in St. Louis in 2007 and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Washington University School of Medicine in 2008. He joined the faculty at BYU in 2009 and is a professor in the department of Biology. He served as chair of the department in 2018 and 2019 and dean of Graduate Studies from 2019 to 2020. Currently, he is the president of Brigham Young University–Hawaii, a position he has held since July 1, 2020. President, thank you for the opportunity to visit with you, and a warm aloha.

John Kauwe: Aloha.

Woods: I want to go back to the spring of 2020, . . . in which Elder Jeffrey R. Holland introduced you as the next BYU–Hawaii president and said, “‘God moves in . . . mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.’ To help perform some of them, he has brought a native son back to the very origins of the restored Church in the Pacific.”[1] This leads to the question What is your ancestral LDS connection to the Pacific, and specifically to Hawaii?

Kauwe: So that was quite the moment on May 12, when Elder Holland announced [that] Monica and I would be serving [in] this role, and he said those words, [which] are powerful. He also talked about the fact that I had been prepared from birth for this role. And that’s a lot to hear as an individual. It’s a lot to listen to, and there’s also that pressure and the blessing of having direct ties—not just to the Pacific, not just to Hawaii, but to Laie itself, to the foundations of that community, to the building of the first chapel, to the beginning of the Church in Hawaii. So I’m the fourth-great-grandson of Kaleohano. Kaleohano was one of the first native Hawaiians to be baptized into the Church. He and his close relative Jonathan Napela met George Q. Cannon on Maui. George Q. Cannon was essentially alone as a missionary at that point.[2]

He [George Q. Cannon] felt prompted to stay in Hawaii. He didn’t speak the Hawaiian language. But he ran into that household, and Kaleohano was of royal lineage. He [Kaleohano] was highly educated both in Western and native Hawaiian traditions and academic endeavors. He spoke English fluently, and he and his family brought in George Q. Cannon and taught him the Hawaiian language—and actually, Kaleohano was baptized quite quickly after meeting George Q. Cannon. Jonathan Napela was baptized several months after that.[3] But Kaleohano from that point in the rest of his life, he served forty years as a full-time missionary. He served a mission on every island of Hawaii. When the Saints finally settled in Laie, his was one of the first households to go there.

While he was there, he was the liaison between the Church and the Hawaiian monarchy because of his royal ancestry. He was a renowned kumu hula [hula teacher], so he taught the hula and he composed music. We still sing songs in our family that he composed about his faith and the foundations of the gospel. Many of his descendants are still very strong, active members of the Church, and his descendants are really some of the foundational leaders of Laie for generations. So for me, having that connection and being asked generations later—after benefiting from his legacy of faith—to come back and lead in such a significant way in that very community, it’s overwhelming, right? It’s incredibly powerful, and it’s both an incredible honor and responsibility that we feel. And it’s joyful. I mean, it took me time on May 12, 2020, when Elder Holland said these things about Monica and me. It was overwhelming, right? But over time, these last five years, it’s become clear exactly why we are serving in this moment and how my legacy of faith from my ancestors has influenced our capacity to lead, to tackle problems—maybe that past presidents knew about but felt like weren’t tractable for them. So it’s an incredible blessing to have that connection. And I’m grateful for the chance to kind of honor the legacy of my ancestors.

Woods: It’s wonderful. And being the first native Hawaiian to serve as the president of BYU–Hawaii is no small thing. . . . I’ve seen photos of you and your wife, and also of your family. It looks like you have this great team spirit, and so maybe you could just tell me a little bit about them.

Kauwe: Yes, there’s no doubt. Monica was born and raised here in Provo, Utah. And the first time she left her household was when we got married and moved to inner city St. Louis, Missouri. And from that moment we started our family, she’s been up for any adventure, and more precisely, we’ve been up for whatever the Lord asks us to do. I’ve been really grateful to have her example of that. She is an incredibly faithful and powerful woman. She does not enjoy the spotlight at all, but she has a deep love for individuals, and so I think as we serve together, it’s been amazing to see [that as] someone who just really struggles with speaking in front of groups, she gets out there and ministers to the one even though she’s standing in front of everyone. The students absolutely love her, and they benefit so much from her. And she manages, as you can imagine, so much. We have five kids, [and] when we started [at BYU–Hawaii], they were ages two to thirteen—and she manages our household. She’s an incredible mother. She’s almost superhuman in that capacity.

As for our kids now, our oldest is on his mission. His name is Sai. He’s been on his mission for two weeks. He’s in Hamilton, New Zealand. He’s so excited. We actually have a little bit of Maori ancestry, and so he’s been excited about connecting with that and learning of his Maori ancestry. The other kids—my daughter’s sixteen, Mealani, and she’s doing great. She actually is mostly attending BYU–Hawaii instead of high school. She’s really enjoyed being on campus, and we’re kind of putting our money where our mouth is, so to speak.

Sai also went to BYU–Hawaii before his mission, and then the three little boys are Nawai (he’s thirteen), Keawe is ten, and Kaleo is seven now. And they just love it. Nawai is a surfer, surfs every day that he possibly can. He’s quite good. We’re hoping he won’t start charging Pipeline anytime soon. He wants it. So we’re just hoping he’ll stay safe. And then the little boys are just doing little boy things. But we’re very aware this [BYUH assignment] is a family responsibility. I’ve never sensed any resentment from anyone in our family about the responsibilities, even the kids. They have to go to a lot of extra events and meetings, and they have to dress up in their Sunday clothes often. There’s a lot asked of them, but they’re joyful about it, and they’re always up for it, and they love the students and the students love them. So it’s been really nice. We have fun together.

Woods: That’s fantastic. Going back to Monica, I was reading in a previous interview she said that your concern for others and desire for their success has influenced many students’ lives. And Monica added [that] it is the same quality that she believes would make you an influential university president, at the time of your appointment. So it leads to the question How do you think faculty members’ concern for their [students] impacts the success of their education and their future life?

BYU–Hawaii President John S. K. Kauwe III and his wife, Monica Kauwe. Courtesy of BYU–Hawaii Communications.

Kauwe: I love this question, and it comes down to concern and love—they’re kind of the same concept. If you love someone deeply, then you are paying attention to what they need, how they’re falling short, how you can serve them, how you can build them up. I think that that word—concern for others—is that idea that you love them, you understand what they need, and you’re trying to build that. And as a teacher, as a faculty member, that is fundamentally what you should be doing. And I think that’s important when you think about [how] it can be tempting as a faculty member at a university—especially in Church Educational System, but really anywhere—to want to be just loved by your students. And unfortunately, the easiest way to do that is to give them A’s and not hold them accountable and entertain them in the classroom instead of teaching them in the classroom and appease them instead of challenging them. That’s not love. That’s not concern. That’s not going to build them up. It is vital that faculty truly love their students enough to challenge them, enough to hold them accountable, enough to have a one-on-one conversation with a student who’s struggling and understand what’s going on and help them correct those things.

I think that’s what Monica maybe was referring to, . . . that over the years of my career, both as a faculty member and as a faculty leader, she has seen that I have been willing to bring in a student and say, “You know, you’re working in my lab, and that’s a great privilege, but you’re falling short in ways that are going to affect your future. And I’m willing to have this conversation with you.” Or faculty that I was leading or that I do lead, being able to say to them, “You know, I love you enough that I want to see you be successful. And I believe in you. So we’re going to have some conversations about what has to be better and what has to change for you to have long-term success.” And I think she [Monica] has seen that and is referring to the fact that I love them enough to have the hard conversation because I want them to be truly successful for the long term. And I think faculty need to do that at every level. It doesn’t mean that you’re harsh, and Elder Holland, who obviously I have a deep connection to because of this assignment, . . . he said . . . [that] the Savior loved everyone, but he never left them without an invitation to do better. Then he admonished us that we need to strike that same sensitive balance in our own lives of loving others, but also inviting them to do more, to be better, to seek excellence in their lives.[4] That’s a vital part of leadership. It’s a vital part of truly loving others.

Woods: That’s wonderful. Thank you. I’m also wondering about your journey from a BYU student to becoming president of BYU–Hawaii. Just the salient features, those high points as you look back and reflect [on] the navigation of the hand of the Lord.

Kauwe: So this is a five-hour conversation, but I’ll give you the very, very short version. I came here to BYU very young. I was sixteen years old. I had a great mentor; his name is Dennis Shiozawa. He retired recently. Fantastic biologist, fantastic teacher, fantastic person. He took me in, and I saw his life, and I thought, “He studies things that he loves. He mentors students and builds the foundation for their future, whether it’s a PhD program, or law school, or medical school, or a job for the Department of Natural Resources. He’s building their futures. This looks like a fun job.” And as far as I could tell, he was wealthy compared to the way I grew up. So I thought, “Wow, that’s a career I could really go for.” And that inspired me. At the time, I really wanted to be a biologist, but that inspired me to pursue graduate education and to try to get a career where I could study things I loved and help students with their future. So I did that—I did research with him. I loved it. Served a mission, came back.

Woods: Where did you serve your mission?

Kauwe: I served in Fukuoka, Japan. And it was an awesome experience. Came back, went straight into a master’s degree at BYU, just to kind of get back up to speed on biology, because I graduated with my bachelor’s degree before I left my mission. It was really fun: I turned nineteen on April 10, and got my degree and my mission call on April 24. It was a pretty cool day. But I got back, did my master’s degree in two years with him [Dennis Shiozawa] , [and] got into Wash U [Washington University in St. Louis], where I was planning to [study] natural population conservation genetics. But when I got there, the Lord kind of shifted things. . . .

I don’t want to make this too long, but I only applied to three graduate schools, which was a bad idea. I was lucky. I applied to Yale, Emory, and Wash U—three elite schools. And I had great grades as a master’s student. They weren’t awesome as an undergrad, but I apparently had great letters of recommendation from mentors, because I got into all three. And the Spirit was very clear. I can still remember it vividly. My last interview was Wash U. I’d gotten souped-up offers from Yale and Emory already, immediately after my interviews, and that’s really appealing for a kid who grew up with parents who didn’t finish college. [I was a] Molokai High School graduate, and now Yale wants me to do a PhD, so it was pretty appealing. But I went to Wash U.

I interviewed [with Wash U]. I remember vividly, on [the] Sunday morning after my interview, going for a walk outside the hotel, and there was the Catholic basilica there. And I was walking I just felt this overwhelmingly clear prompting: “This is where you’re going to do your schooling.” I didn’t have a cell phone at the time. Payphones still existed, so I put some money in the pay phone, called my fiancée, Monica, and I said, “I’m really feeling like Saint Louis is the place.” And she said, “I’m not there. I’m not at these interviews. But the Spirit is telling me this is right. I trust you on this one.” And we made that decision to go to Wash U.

So we got there, and the person I planned to work with didn’t work out at all—immediately didn’t work out. It wasn’t in a negative way, but we sat down, and we talked and realized that I actually had more of an interest in human disease than I did in natural conservation genetics, natural populations. And the advisor I was going to work with is still one of the world’s top population geneticists. His name is Alan Templeton, [an] amazing person. He’s in all the textbooks; he’s fantastic. And he said, “Keoni, I love you. I want to work with you. I should be on your committee. I shouldn’t be your advisor. Let me help you find someone else.” So right away this. The Lord told us to go here, and the whole thing blows up.

Fast forward, a few months later I chose to work with this woman named Alison Goate, who is the first person to discover mutations that cause Alzheimer’s disease. World famous, world renowned. She wanted me to work with her. I wanted to work with her. And that turned into a fairy tale PhD. Everything we touched turned to gold. I published about twenty papers in four years. We got multiple grants that had me written into them as a postdoc. It was just a fairy tale.

And I’m telling you this because the journey for my life has been so accelerated. My plan wasn’t to finish high school at sixteen. My plan wasn’t to finish college at nineteen. My plan wasn’t to go do a PhD in Alzheimer’s disease, or to do my PhD in less than four years. You can’t plan those things. But the Lord lined up these situations, and I’ve now come to understand it’s because on July 1, 2020, I had to be ready. Monica and I had to be ready to serve as president of BYU–Hawaii by that date, and the Lord just said, “OK, I’m going to do what it takes to make this happen.”

So I finished my PhD, again, 2003 to 2007. You know, that’s not how PhDs usually work. You don’t finish a PhD in less than four years, in sciences especially. But I did. And then I did that postdoc. Actually, BYU offered me a job before I started my postdoc, and I deferred a year. So I said, “I’ll take the job, but I don’t want to start yet. I want to do a postdoc first and [then] I’ll come start.” So in 2009 I came here as a brand-new faculty member. And, again, things were so accelerated. I came with multiple NIH grants already in hand. I got my first sole NIH grant two and a half years after I started as a faculty member. I’ve kept continuous NIH funding ever since. Because of that, and the success—and I also had a heavy teaching load because when I came, . . . I was teaching a lot, and I love to teach, so that went well—BYU actually advanced me to associate professor a year early and then [to] full professor another year early after that. So I became chair of biology and full professor within nine years of starting at BYU.

Again, just everything is accelerated. And then I was chair for only a year when I applied to be the dean of Graduate Studies. And Kevin Worthen and Jim Rasband were inspired to give me a chance to do that. And so now I’m at the whole university level, learning all the different areas, everything that’s happening. And I was loving it.

This is where there’s kind of an interesting fork in the road, in . . . October, maybe September, 2019. An elite R1 institution offered me a position. They offered me a job as a director of a center for neurodegenerative research with a massive salary and a twenty-million-dollar startup package, and a twenty-million-dollar endowment that I would be able to use in perpetuity for my research, and twelve faculty hires underneath me. And basically, they were just giving me the keys and saying, “Put us on the map in Alzheimer’s disease.” And this, I think, is the biggest, kind of, fork in the road of becoming president of BYU–Hawaii. The Lord had prepared this path, but the path could have led to elite research professor at the world stage, or something else.

So Monica and I took the whole family to this place. We interviewed for the job together. We spent the whole weekend down at this location. I don’t want to disclose the location, but it was exciting. On the way back, we talked about it, and Monica just said, “It doesn’t feel like home. Doesn’t feel right.” And we had a discussion, and I told Monica, my exact words were, “We’re not deciding on this job—this is the best job offer we are ever going to get in our lives; this is what every research professor dreams of—we’re deciding if our goals are to be [either] the director of [an elite] Alzheimer’s disease research center,” or something like that, and then I said, “or”—and I literally said—“president of BYU–Hawaii.” And I didn’t say that because I meant it. I actually qualified it afterwards. And I wasn’t saying it like I thought it, I was just saying—like, throwing it out there. And I said, “No, what I mean is, whatever the Church Educational System asks us to do.”

And then we discussed it, and I said I love being dean of Graduate Studies. We were having a blast. We were making some really important changes that were helping the university in meaningful ways. And we liked the life that we were signed up for. We were near family. Everything was good, and so we thought, “We’re going to leave this to the Lord.” Famous last words. “We’re happy doing exactly what we’re doing. We don’t need more. I don’t need to sign up for a life where I have to make myself worth all the investment, that tens of millions of dollars that they’re investing in me and the future. We’re happy, we need to do this [remain at BYU].”

A month after that, I had my first meeting with Elder Holland. A few months after that, he asked to meet with both Monica and me. And then a few weeks after that, the First Presidency asked to meet with us—all three of them wanted to meet with Monica and me. So within a few months after we decided that that job wasn’t for us and that we were willing to do whatever the Church Educational System asked, we were president of BYU–Hawaii.

I know that was kind of long, but that’s the very, very fast version. And it really was a decision by us, at that stage of our career, to [go] where the Lord had given us every blessing and every opportunity and all the preparation. It was the decision on our end, by the Spirit, to say, “We’re going to wait and do what the Lord asked us to do in this role.” And I want to be clear: Had the Spirit told us to go do that other job, I think we still could have blessed the kingdom and spread the gospel and been an example in incredible and meaningful ways. But for us, that’s not what the Lord wanted. He wanted us to do this. And just reflecting back on what Elder Holland said about us being prepared from birth, you can see, even in this short conversation, for me, who was born in 1980, to be ready to be president of BYU–Hawaii in 2020, the Lord had to do some things. He had to accelerate the timeline, or it was not going to happen.

Woods: One thing that clicked for me that hadn’t clicked before listening to you and reading a little bit about you was the fact that with BYU–Hawaii focusing on the Pacific and Asia region, you were called to go to Japan—[that] brings in that another element, which I don’t think was coincidental.

Kauwe: No, not at all. And [with] my research in Alzheimer’s disease and other diseases, I’ve worked in Samoa for years, since 2012. So yeah, there are a lot of layers to it. Like I said, this is a long conversation, and [I] reflect back on how carefully the Lord has prepared Monica and me for what he needed us to do—needs us to do right now. And just some trends like that. I believe it works like that for all of us, whether the task is as visible as president of BYU–Hawaii or not.

Woods: Or it can, if we’re willing to step into the opportunity.

Kauwe: Yeah, there’s preparation.

Woods: Let me go back to when you met with Elder Holland and the First Presidency in the spring of 2020 to receive your appointment as the eleventh president of BYU–Hawaii. You were, at that time, about forty, which is really young to be a university president. And you mentioned in a previous interview that [in] the meeting with the First Presidency and Elder Holland, they inspired confidence in you. I wanted to just launch from this point and ask, How important is it for faculty, to instill confidence in their students, and what role do you think this plays in their education and long-term life impact?

Kauwe: There’s so much that we don’t understand about this world that’s creating situations of anxiety, of lack of self-confidence, of insecurity in their capacity and their beliefs and their future. And we know this on a national, even a global, level—the mental health of our students is really, really struggling. And I think most of us understand those feelings of inadequacy. There are entire fields that study the imposter syndrome of people who are successful and qualified, but they still have this feeling that they’re fake and that they’re not good enough. We all understand that feeling, but there’s something about the world that these kids are growing up in. They feel it very intensely, very early. So for faculty, and beyond just faculty, for an institution to have a culture that teaches our students their intrinsic worth and our confidence in their capacity and in their future, it’s absolutely vital. It has to be a foundational principle of a university culture and of faculty’s interactions with their students. Institutionally we can’t walk in and say, “You are children that need to be babysat, and we expect you to misbehave, and we’re going to make sure you don’t.” It can’t be that feeling. It has to be a feeling, institutionally, of “You are the best of the best. You are aligned. You were accepted to this university because you align with our mission, and we know that you have the capacity to embody it and extend it and demonstrate excellence in ways that we’ve never seen before.”

As a faculty member, it’s the same thing. You walk into the classroom, and it can’t be, “I know you guys are going to be late, you’re going to be on your phones, and you’re not going to turn stuff in on time. Here’s my syllabus, and it’s going to make you do everything right.” It’s tempting to do that. But our students need to be sat down in a classroom and told, “I believe that you are the future of this world, and that you have the capacity to make a difference and that as a member of the Church you have access to special support through the power of God and through your covenants. And I believe in you. That’s why I teach here, and that’s why I’m going to push you: because I want you to have the knowledge to make a difference.” That shift can make a really big difference.

And that’s what happened for me when I sat in front of President Nelson. You think I didn’t feel inadequate when the First Presidency asked me, at age forty, “We want you to go be president of BYU–Hawaii”? And it was interesting to me, as I reflect on that moment, because they didn’t give me advice. They didn’t give Monica and me much advice. They didn’t tell us how to do this or what they needed us to do. They said, “We know that you are the right people to do this job right now. We’re confident that you’re going to take the university to higher levels that it needs to go. We’re confident you’re going to bless the lives of the students for generations.” And I reflect back on that, and you ask, “How could you know that?” I mean, I’ve hired dozens, if not hundreds, of people as a leader over these years. And are you ever 100 percent confident that the person you hire is going to be great? You can’t be. There’s always risk. But for them [the First Presidency], there was a level of spiritual confirmation that they shared with me. “You can do this. You are the person that the Lord has asked to do this. You have a special capacity. You have a special role.”

As a faculty member, when you work with your students, you have to seek that same revelation where you can sit with every student, even the one who just failed your test that you called in to talk about after the first exam. “Hey, things aren’t looking good, but it’s not over yet. We can bring you back.” You have to have that personal revelation that that person has potential, that they’re worth investing in, that they can be successful. And when you have that personal conviction, you can communicate it to them, and it can really inspire them.

I reflect back on President Nelson’s address to the young adults of the Church in 2022, “Choices for Eternity.” And I think that if you wanted to figure out—I know we had talked about another question about anxiety and mental health and those kinds of things—if you want to address confidence and the challenges with mental health that our students are facing, what the President of the Church taught us in that devotional is the answer. What is your divine, lasting identity? Child of God, child of the covenant, disciple of Christ. Who is in charge of your testimony? You are. What are the promises of honoring your covenants? That you’ll have a future more exhilarating than anything you can possibly imagine.[5] Those are the things that we have to inspire our students to see that in themselves, and when they do, they can overcome these challenges that they’re facing [with] mental health. And that’s our responsibility as faculty to teach them the content of our areas, but also to do it in a way that inspires that kind of knowledge of their identity and confidence in their future.

Woods: Well said. Thank you. That’s very inspiring. I want to go back about fifty years to something that President Romney said way back in 1973. And he referred to what was then the Church College of Hawaii, but would the next year be BYU–Hawaii. But he said it was a “living laboratory,” stating that “what can be done here interculturally in a small way is what mankind must do on a large scale if we are ever to have real brotherhood on this earth.”[6] As a scientist, as an educator trained in molecular biology and population genetics, what do you think of when you ponder the idea of the BYU–Hawaii campus being a living laboratory, which now has about three thousand students from seventy different countries?

Kauwe: I love that phrase—[“living laboratory”]. His [President Romney’s] dedication at the Aloha Center, to me, is one of the most powerful foundational speeches in the history of BYU–Hawaii. It really is incredible. So “living laboratory”—he talked about it directly, and I believe it. There is the level of just the simple idea that we are going to bring all these cultures together and that we’re going to find unity and that we’re going to show the world how that can be done. That is a grand experiment, and it’s not easy.

I’ve done interviews about this before. We deal with all the challenges that you would expect by bringing all these cultures together, and I think the laboratory part is taking them on so directly and so openly. The conversations about culture and race and all of those things happen on a daily and open basis on our campus in ways that are very difficult to manage in other settings. That’s part of the laboratory. And then the kind of the experimental variable that we have is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We’re trying to show people that if you add in the gospel of Jesus Christ, what happens to that mixture of race and culture and ethnicity and traditions if you unify that under the gospel of Jesus Christ? And when people come to visit our campus, what they feel is the result of that grand experiment. They always feel it. You feel the unity that comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the reason it’s so strong is that you’re also experiencing this diversity of language and culture that, for most people, is shocking. Most people have never seen anything like that in their lives. So that’s part of it.

I also think about the laboratory side of [the fact that] we’re tiny. Three thousand students, 150 faculty. We can try things. We’re mobile. We can adjust curriculum, we can adjust student advising, we can try things that most institutions cannot. Combined with our governance through the board of trustees, we are just nimble in a way that no other university in the world can be. So I think there are two levels to that.

Woods: It’s incredible. I was thinking, as you were speaking about the concept of being able (at BYU–Hawaii) [to be] actually witnessing every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ,[7] a premillennial kind of a glimpse at what it can be and will be. It’s very powerful.

Kauwe: Will be, yeah. It’s really cool.

Woods: Well, let me shift to another question. What lessons do you think religious educators, and really teachers in general, can learn from what you have experienced on BYU–Hawaii campus with respect to adapting to meet the needs of students from a large range of diversity?

Kauwe: I think some of our religious educators on campus could probably give better answers to that than I can. . . . Elder Gong just visited with us and kind of shared similar concepts.[8] Just going back to where we have this mission, or vision, on our campus that we can be an example to the world of intercultural peace through the gospel of Jesus Christ, and realizing that the gospel of Jesus Christ creates a particular kind of feeling and unity and culture, and that the culture and practices and values of all the peoples of the world have significant compatibility with that. So I think there are times when we’re maybe not as cognizant of the ways that we can bring diverse cultures into that culture of Christ and help people kind of parse out what comes into that culture and what gets left behind.

And I think again, just being educated enough and open-minded enough to have real conversations about what comes in, what’s compatible with that culture, and what gets left behind. I think that’s important to have those conversations and to be educated about them. It’s very easy to just have something that feels strange or feels out of place and kind of say, “Oh, we don’t do that.” But really, we’re a global church in a way that we weren’t even twenty years ago. And to just be thoughtful about, like, I mean look at the new hymns that we’re talking about. You consider what would the Church have done fifty years ago if we were trying to sing “This Little Light of Mine.” Did we understand that there’s a way of worshipping that is joyful and that’s compatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ that’s different than our traditions? And I think just realizing that. That’s one really easy example to point out.

The reality is that some of those things are going to be uncomfortable for some of us because they’re strange to us. They’re out of our cultural practice. But just realizing that this is a gospel that reaches “every kindred, . . . tongue, and people,”[9] and there’s going to be different ways of worship, different ways to express joy, and we have to be able to talk about those and understand them. And as we do, we’re going to be better for it. But I think there are a lot of exciting things that can happen. And I will be the first to admit that I’m getting old enough that there’s change that makes me uncomfortable, that I have to sit there and think, “Wow. There’s nothing fundamentally, morally wrong with this. There’s nothing incompatible with the gospel with this, but I still don’t like it.” How do I come to terms with that?

I think for faculty, that’s a real challenge: To acknowledge that the way I think things should be [is] based on where I was raised, and how I was raised, and . . . what the Church culture was up to that point. It was good, but there’s other good too, and how do I become comfortable with that? I don’t know. I’m certain there will be people that are uncomfortable the first time they sing that hymn [“This Little Light of Mine”]. They [wonder], “Is this OK?” And it is. I won’t get into more details, but I think there are many examples, and as faculty we have to be thoughtful. Am I really moving forward the way the Lord wants me to, and understanding how the global Church necessarily looks different than the Church that maybe I spent my childhood in, even though there’s nothing fundamentally different of doctrine? Am I ready for that, and am I allowing myself to progress with my students through that?

Woods: That’s a good point. I think this leads into another important point of discussion. Dr. Stephen R. Covey taught that principles are universal, timeless, and self-evident.[10] With this in mind, what have you found are the most effective principles for teaching at a Latter-day Saint school in your current position? . . . [Of] these principles, what have you found are the most effective in teaching in this religious environment?

Kauwe: Just off the top of my head, the principle I think that our students really benefit from is our personal testimony of the blessings of living the gospel. . . . But it’s very interesting if you think about [what] the Savior teaches us in Matthew: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” and then those other things will be given to you (Matthew 6:33). King Benjamin teaches us in Mosiah 2:41, “Consider on the blessed and happy state of those [who] keep the commandments of God,” and “They are blessed in all things . . . temporal and spiritual.” And if you look at the words of President Nelson, almost every talk, he essentially reteaches those two concepts, that same teaching that the Savior taught King [Benjamin], that many other prophets have taught. But to me, those two scriptures really stand out as explicitly teaching that, that correlation and that causative relationship between seeking the kingdom of God and being blessed in ways that allow you to serve.

President Nelson reiterates that over and over and over. And I think because we have to help our students feel the joy of living the gospel and understand the long-term blessings of living the gospel—that comes from the look on our face when we walk into the classroom, all the way to the end. For me, it’s so important for these students to understand that you personally feel joy from the gospel of Jesus Christ and to see that promise that’s been made by the Savior himself, by King Benjamin, and by the current president of the Church. That’s why I go back to what President Nelson said: If you honor your covenants, he promises this generation freedom from fear, [along with] confidence [and a] capacity to influence the world for good in ways that are well beyond their own capacity. A future that’s more exhilarating than anything they could ever imagine.[11] They need to know that you have experienced that, that you believe that, that you’ve seen it happen in other people’s lives, and that it will happen for them.

And you go back to this living laboratory conversation and say, “In my life, I’m confident that making and honoring covenants and trying to be as worthy as I can to hear the Spirit’s promptings has led to incredible joy, resilience in the face of challenges”—like all those things. That’s one sample. I think as religious educators and faculty in the university in general, we have the advantage of many, many experimental replicates of this [that] we have seen. I mean, how many students have come through your classroom? Thousands and thousands, maybe tens of thousands. And for me, maybe not the same volume of students, but I’ve had 130 students work in my lab personally. I’m with them and mentoring them, and I’ve watched their lives, and so for me—and now my teaching, my presidential time—I can tell my students [these things].

Just like in Alma 32, we talk about going from faith to knowledge. I think many of our religious educators, when it comes to the blessings of living the gospel, if we actually reflect back on what we’ve seen in all of our students lives, we’ll realize that we have so much data that we have probably gone from faith that this principle is true to knowledge that making and honoring covenants with God leads to those promises being fulfilled. And I think that can be a really powerful principle for us to help our students understand, that I know that this is how it works. The Savior taught it. Ancient prophets taught it. Living prophets teach it. And I’ve watched it in practice in my faculty career for almost twenty years . . . or whatever. And I just see it being fulfilled over and over. So it’s going to work for you. I think that’s important not to forget to teach.

Woods: That’s awesome. . . . At this stage of your administration, how do you envision BYU–Hawaii’s role in the global educational landscape?

Kauwe: We have a very unique role in the Church Educational System, in the building of the kingdom. And the best way to articulate it is we serve as a capstone for the spiritual and intellectual education of the future leaders of Asia and the Pacific.

Woods: BYU–Hawaii has a reputation of having this diverse student body. What are you doing to emphasize and promote diversity and inclusion on your campus?

Kauwe: In the worldly sense of those words, almost nothing. . . . What we are doing is we are saying, “Our mission is to serve the students of Oceania and the Asian rim [and to] prepare them to be disciples of Christ and leaders. And our vision is that we’re going to be an example to the world of intercultural peace through the gospel of Jesus Christ.” On an operational basis, what we’re doing is we’re saying, “If you, as a child of God and covenant member of his kingdom, have a desire to build the kingdom in Oceania and the Asian rim, to live and lead there, then this is where you should come to be educated.” So what are we doing for inclusion? What we’re saying is that if this is important in your life and you feel that this is part of the mission the Lord has called you to, come here and participate in it, and it doesn’t matter what color you are, where you grew up, none of that matters. What matters is, Are you committed to this mission? If you are, then you’re a part of this.

So things happen that sometimes people perceive as diversity and equity and inclusion efforts. For example, we have culture night on our campus, and if you were to attend culture night, we have twenty-seven different clubs that are named after their country or their culture that are performing. And you would think, “Oh, the Samoa club is performing, so it’s going to be a bunch of Samoans.” And it’s not. It’s students from many different countries and many different colors of skin and many different cultural backgrounds learning Samoan song and dance from their Samoan classmates and doing it together. There’s neither extreme of DEI [diversion, equity, and inclusion] politics happening there. We’re not saying, “Only Samoans can learn and dance Samoan.” We’re not saying, “You have to have a certain number of people from every culture in order to dance.” We’re just saying, “We want to celebrate this culture together, and everyone who wants to be part of that celebration, join that club and be part of that celebration,” because we’re one in Christ and we have one purpose: to bless the lives of all the people in Asia and the Pacific.

So it’s an interesting dynamic where we’re not doing anything other than saying, “This is our mission if you’re in. We’re all in together.” But in practice, if you were to look from the outside, you see things that are like, “Wow, they must be really working hard to integrate cultures.” No, not really. We’re valuing each other and celebrating each other and trying to live the gospel of Jesus Christ together, and we have a unified purpose of living the gospel but also of serving Oceania and the Asian rim. Hopefully that makes sense; the way we are doing it is not an explicit approach to diversity and inclusion, but it creates that dynamic.

Woods: Very insightful. I want to go back to BYU–Hawaii’s mission—this idea of educating the minds and spirits of students with an intercultural, gospel-centered environment and curriculum. You kind of touched on this, but there’s so much in that sentence.

Kauwe: It really relates to the answer I just gave you, which was that we have a purpose to bless the lives and build the communities and build the kingdom of God across Oceania and the Asian rim. Our curriculum, whether it’s in religious education or business management or biology, is focused on that effort.

Woods: Let me shift to another point. I want to go back to seventy years ago when, at the Church College of Hawaii groundbreaking [later called BYU–Hawaii in 1974], Church President David O. McKay prophesied, “From this school, I’ll tell you, will go men and women whose influence will be felt for good towards the establishment of peace internationally.”[12] That’s been quoted many times over the decades, as we both well know. My question is, What’s currently being done to specifically help fulfill that prophecy of this peace internationally?

Kauwe: Very specifically, we have a major in intercultural peacebuilding, and our students are being directly trained in practices for mediation, for intercultural and international relations. We have faculty who are experts in those government-level relationships as well as interpersonal-level relationships, so there are some very precise things that are being done even at that level. If you step up one level, there are the efforts towards career placement. So for us, placing our students in careers—not jobs, but in careers—in Oceania and the Asian rim, that’s our metric of success. So it’s not simply, “Oh, they got a job at Amazon in Salt Lake.” That’s not how we fulfill our mission. So there’s an extra level of effort and difficulty associated with that, but if you stepped up that level, then that’s what it looks like.

Woods: One question I’ve been looking forward to asking you, being a both a man of science and a man of faith, is the question, Why is it so important to sift our culture through the gospel instead of the gospel through our culture? Or why is it so important to sift our discipline through the gospel rather than the gospel through our discipline?

Kauwe: It’s all about priorities. And again, as you can tell, I love President Nelson’s “Choices for Eternity” address. He was so personal when he laid it out and said there are many identities that one could have. He talked about physician, whatever his rank was in the military (I can’t remember what it was). He shared those things and said these are wonderful things but they have to be secondary to [our identity as a] child of God, child of the covenant, disciple of Jesus Christ. He said it so clearly, and that’s the teaching. You have to know what your primary identities are, and if your primary identity is scholar, then you will struggle with sifting the gospel through your discipline instead of the other way around. . . . When you do that, you miss things, and you miss out on the blessings that you have when you put the gospel first, when you put the Lord first. It’s very, very important that we don’t forget that all these identities are wonderful but if we put them ahead of those three lasting identities that President Nelson taught us about, we’re going to lose.[13] We’re going to lose in the long term, and we’re not going to be able to support our students because they’re going to lose. If you think your identity is [only] “I’m a baseball player,” how many kids have you seen where that’s their identity and things don’t work out? But if your identity is child of God, child of the covenant, disciple of Christ, first, we’ve been promised it will always go well.

Woods: That’s fantastic. Having now served as president of BYU–Hawaii for nearly five years, what evidence have you witnessed regarding the scriptural passage “I, the Lord your God . . . remember those who are upon the isles of the sea” (2 Nephi 29:7)? I know there are probably many things, but especially these last five years, what do you think of first as far as seeing the hand of the Lord hovering [over] this place [BYU–H], where we have students coming from all over the Pacific, Oceania, and also Asia?

Kauwe: There’s some very kind of practical, pragmatic things that come to my mind as the leader of the university. With a small university, you don’t enjoy any economies of scale, and so the cost of educating a student at BYU–Hawaii is significantly higher than the cost of educating them at BYU–Idaho or BYU. So there is a very clear, measurable indication of how important the students of the isles of the sea are to our Heavenly Father, and how important they are to the future of the Saints and the communities in the kingdom. So I know that’s a very pragmatic answer, but there’s some demonstrable, measurable data that reaching to those students in ways that are unique and support their needs and their future is important to our Heavenly Father, and he’s communicated to our prophets, seers, and revelators—his leaders on this earth—to use resources in a unique way to support them and their future. I think that’s really exciting. Doctrine and Covenants 1:1 says the same thing: “Hearken . . . ye that are upon the islands of the sea.” It matters.

I think another layer to this is—it’s not so pragmatic or tangible, but you can see a really incredible outpouring of the Spirit on these students: the spirit of our campus, the Spirit that you feel when you visit these countries among the Saints. I think the Lord really does bless them in powerful ways. And you think about parts of the world like Tonga where the Church is just so strong and so well established and [has] generations and generations of Church members. Sometimes, if we grew up in Utah, we kind of think that people . . . of pioneer ancestry are the ones that have [ancestors who crossed the American plains], but there are Saints in Samoa and Tonga who have nearly as many generations of Church membership as many of [those descended from] the [plains-crossing] pioneers. It’s pretty amazing. So I think there are a couple of indicators, but that’s kind of my quick answer.

Woods: I have one final question. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we conclude? Anything you’d like to say that I haven’t asked you about?

Kauwe: What would I share? . . . I guess I’ve implied my testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but I think, of all the things I shared with you, I think hopefully I would top it off by just saying, I know that we are children of God. I know that this is his restored Church. I know it’s led by Jesus Christ. I know that God’s plan for us completely depends upon our Savior, Jesus Christ—his love for us, his sacrifice for us—and I’m deeply grateful for it. And I’m grateful for the way that living his teachings and living [our] covenant relationships with him blesses our lives. I have a testimony that these things are true.

Woods: Thank you so much.

Notes

[1] “To Every Thing There Is a Season,” BYU–Hawaii devotional, May 12, 2020, https://www.speeches.byuh.edu; quoting William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” Hymns, no. 285, www.churchofjesuschrist.org.

[2] Cannon was one of the few missionaries to stay in Hawaii, while others left. See Mary Jane Woodger, “The Ten Pioneering Missionaries of the Sandwich Islands, 1850–54,” Go Ye into All the World: The Growth and Development of Mormon Missionary Work, ed. Reid L. Neilson and Fred W. Woods (Religious Studies Center, 2012), 217–40.

[3] For an overview of Napela’s life and impact, see Fred E. Woods, “The Most influential Mormon Islander: Jonathan Hawaii Napela,” Hawaiian Journal of History 42 (2008):135—57.

[4] Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Second Half of the Second Century of Brigham Young University,” Brigham Young University devotional, August 23, 2021, https://speeches.byu.edu.

[5] Russell M. Nelson, “Choices for Eternity,” worldwide devotional for young adults, May 15, 2022, www.churchofjesuschrist.org.

[6] Marion G. Romney, “Dedication of the Aloha Center, Church College of Hawaii,” January 25, 1973, https://speeches.byuh.edu.

[7] Mosiah 27:31; Doctrine and Covenants 138:23.

[8] Gerrit W. Gong, “Your Future Is Bright and Full of Promise,” Brigham Young University–Hawaii devotional, March 9, 2025, https://speeches.byuh.edu.

[9] Revelation 5:9.

[10] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989).

[11] Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”

[12] David O. McKay, “Groundbreaking & Dedication of CCH/BYU–Hawaii,” February 12, 1955, https://speeches.byuh.edu.

[13] Nelson, “Choices for Eternity.”