Thinking globally, acting locally: UH Hilo poli-sci alum Michael Taylor focuses on Hawaiʻi’s place in Pacific regionalism
Michael Taylor says UH Hilo offered him unique opportunities in both local and global political spheres. He’s now staff at the East-West Center while earning a graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University.
As a senior at Pearl City High School on Oʻahu, Michael Taylor had planned on attending a college on the continent where he could pursue a pre-med major. He says the choice to attend the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo was almost accidental through a college application fair at his high school. “It was a free application,” he says.
Taylor found himself drawn to UH Hilo with its proximity to family, low tuition costs, and a small campus with more one-on-one time with professors. “I made the decision for UH Hilo, and as soon as I got to campus I fell in love with the place,” he says.
American politics, civic duties, and DJing
Taylor initially wanted to switch majors, from the program he’d been admitted for, political science, to psychology. He was aiming to be a neurosurgeon at the time, and out of all the majors UH Hilo offered, psychology felt the most relevant to the field of neuroscience.
However, he decided to explore political science further after observing people’s anxiety around Donald J. Trump’s first year as president in 2017. “I’m politically engaged and I was like, okay, you know what, maybe it’s time for me to buckle down and just learn a little more, to do my civic duty.”
Poli-sci courses and other classes on East Asian politics and international organizations gave Taylor hope when he was “terrified of the world and terrified of American politics.” What encouraged him to stay in political science was the mentorship of poli-sci professors Enbao Wang, Su-Mi Lee, and Sarah Marusek who instilled in him excitement about what he could personally achieve with his education.
“If it wasn’t for professors like that [who] taught me that the American political system isn’t so scary as it seems to be, I would’ve totally shifted majors,” he says.
He excelled in political science, becoming a Pi Sigma Alpha member, inducted into the Iota Iota Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the only national honor society for those who study political science. “He was a great student and very responsive and responsible, too,” says Professor Lee.
Taylor engaged in activity outside the classroom as well, both on and off-campus, in areas that kept him civically engaged. He served as president of the UH Hilo Student Association (UHHSA) and later chaired committees as a UHHSA senator.
- President Michael Taylor discusses recent developments in the UH Hilo Student Association (Ke Kalahea, Nov. 2019)
In his second semester, he was an intern at U.S. Senator Brian Schatz’s office. “I don’t think I would’ve gotten an opportunity like this freshman year of college if I had gone anywhere else,” says Taylor.
He eventually decided to do a double major, pursuing an additional bachelor’s degree in administration of justice. He enjoyed taking administration of justice courses with professors like Katherine Young and did an internship in the State of Hawaiʻi Public Defender’s Office.
In addition, he took on a minor in Japanese studies, and three certificate programs: pre-law, public policy, and international politics.
As he started to feel a little burned out, Taylor decided he needed to shift gears a bit. As the son of a 1980’s professional DJ that led Taylor to spend a lot of time in high school mixing music and hauling speakers, he had wanted to do something different once at the university. But at the start of the pandemic, he decided to join University Radio Hilo (URH) as a DJ.
He credits mentors like URH advisor Jake Galves for creating a space where he could “fall in love again with music.” Taylor moved quickly from DJ to getting involved in URH management, becoming the station’s general manager, helping to revamp the station’s student charter and its branding.
He also looked outside of music when it came to creating radio programs and organized legislative talk-story sessions with state representatives.
Taylor notes how special it was during the pandemic to gather safely and work together with other students at URH during that turbulent time. “I don’t know what it is with UH Hilo, but it’s always these moments where it’s like, where else could you be in the middle of a pandemic and start running a radio station?” he says.
In recognition of all this hard work, Taylor was the recipient of the ʻIke Pāpālua Ka Lama Ku leadership award in 2021.
Michael was nominated and selected for his ability to see the potential and future of University Radio Hilo. Under Michaelʻs leadership URH has almost doubled in staff boasting the largest list of DJʻs in recent history. He also spent considerable time helping to build some strong foundations for the organization. Especially working on branding, recurring programming, and most notably getting URH to be a live broadcast online in addition to their FM broadcast in Hilo. His vision for the future of URH is coming to fruition and he has set the organization up for success as he graduates this May.
It took rigorous planning to make this incredibly full schedule work. Beyond his own time management skills, he says he felt supported by the UH Hilo community.
“It’s definitely all the people on campus that made me fall in love with Hilo,” he says. “It didn’t feel stressful at all, despite being a double major it didn’t feel overwhelming.”
East-West Center and Johns Hopkins
When Taylor graduated from UH Hilo in 2021, he didn’t have high expectations for his first job out of college. After applying for several positions, he got a call back from the East-West Center, a congressionally-funded national educational institution based on the campus of UH Mānoa that aims to deepen relationships between the United States, Asia, and the Pacific.
Taylor was offered a job supporting EWC’s president with engagements and a leadership transition that would strengthen the institution’s role in the region. “I was like, this is great. This is exactly what I was learning about at UH Hilo, so it’s a job that’s actually using my degree,” he says.
When the East-West Center got a new president, Suzanne Vares-Lum, Taylor continued in his position as the president’s staff assistant. Through the position he’s met leaders like Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, former Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna, former Pacific U.S. Ambassador Frankie Reed, and Hawaiʻi U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono.
Taylor’s skills as a photographer are also being utilized at East-West Center, where he’s captured images of a civil rights leader, the first Cook Islander appointed to the East-West Center board, award-winning journalists, a foreign secretary and a U.S. ambassador, a Micronesian festival, and more.
“Meeting these world leaders, meeting ambassadors and dignitaries, I wouldn’t be able to do this anywhere else,” says Taylor. He says his work at the East-West Center has not only deepened his learning by exposing him to “high-level dialogues” but also contributed to furthering his education.
It was Taylor’s former supervisor Robin Fine that encouraged him to enter graduate school remotely while continuing to work full-time at EWC. Taylor is currently completing a master’s degree in government with a focus on democracy studies, governance, and political communications, at Johns Hopkins University, his dream school when he was a high school senior. The topic of his thesis is about Hawaiʻi’s place in Pacific regionalism.
“A lot of my papers and things that I’ve written about at Hopkins have to do with my experience here at the East-West Center,” he explains. “[EWC] started off with congressional funding; we did a policy paper [on] the principal agent relationship between the State Department and the East-West Center.”
He’s notably exploring the Biden Administration’s Pacific Partnership Strategy to understand the changes and successes necessary for the U.S. to properly serve its Pacific citizens and allies, while also determining how Hawaiʻi can fit in this under a post-decolonial model of regionalism.
“I’ve come to realize that what really matters to me is home, is Hawaiʻi,” he says. “My emphasis has become [about] how do we get Hawaiʻi’s voice on the international platform? How do we get Hawaiʻi’s voice in regional dialogue?”
After Taylor completes his master’s degree, he hopes to eventually get his doctoral degree and teach political science as a professor.
Story by Sophia Kim-O’Sullivan, a graduate student in library science and information at UH Mānoa.
