Newsmaker
Monday, May 26, 1997
Name: Joshua Cooper
Age: 27
Education: University of Hawaii
Occupation: Teacher, activist
Relaxation: Running, writing music
Tell anyone you're involved in peace studies and you strike a "happy hippie sound," said Joshua Cooper, who plans to make peace and social justice his life work. Working for peace
Those aren't just theoretical topics for Cooper, who has been at the University of Hawaii-Manoa campus for eight years, earning a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science, a master's degree and, this month, a doctorate in political science, and onward into his second year of law school.
He was the youngest person selected for the Hawaii Peacemaker Award given annually in memory of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. But Cooper wasn't there to accept the award from Church of the Crossroads; he was in Tahiti demonstrating against France's nuclear testing in the Pacific.
He was applauded for directing the "Rock the Vote" student voter registration campaign in Hawaii and organizing Student Coalition for a Responsible Budget, which mobilized 6,000 students in demonstrations against state budget cuts in higher education.
He was cited for being student representative on the UH Board of Regents, editorial columnist in the UH Ka Leo o Hawaii newspaper, commentator of a weekly KTUH radio show and organizer of an annual "Make Peace a Priority" event on campus.
His involvement is reminiscent of the activist 1960s rather than today's me generation, but Cooper says: "I don't feel I'm unusual. There are a lot of students with the same initiatives. There are a lot of young emerging leaders. It's not 'If I decide to leave, there goes the movement.'"
Teaching is the first element of his plan for life, and it's already running. Cooper, who grew up in Waianae, taught in the Waianae Peace Education Project in Leeward public schools this year and found it a fertile ground. "It's about peace in their daily lives, how you can help serve as a mediator in your family. Elementary school kids are ... not tarnished by experience, still optimistic. You can see them begin to wake up." He also was a teaching assistant in a UH course, "Introduction to Peace Studies."
Cooper will attend the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, this summer in pursuit of a teaching certificate. He studied there in the summer of 1995 and found time to march in Paris with Greenpeace against the nuclear testing.
He's attending law school -- not for a career as lawyer but as a tool for his goal to lead an international human rights organization someday. "It's not to get a degree so I can buy a BMW. Wealth to me is when I wake up and I have something to work on."
Cooper saw success in lobbying efforts at the recent state Legislature when lawmakers voted to give voting power to the student member of the UH Board of Regents.
"You can lobby forever, but it is much more effective to be making the decisions. Right now the vision is coming from the Legislature ... but it is a time of redefining politics in Hawaii for the future."
Mary Adamski, Star-Bulletin
