New Endowed Chair at the University of Hawai’i to Honor Poet Dana Naone Hall

A $3.2 million gift from the Laurence H. Dorcy Hawaiian Foundation will establish a new endowed Hawaiian studies chair at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge. The Dana Naone Hall Endowed Chair in Hawaiian Studies, Literature and the Environment is named in honor of the revered poet and environmental activist.

Naone Hall graduated from Kamehameha Schools and earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies with an emphasis on contemporary poetry from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She was the editor of Hawaiʻi Review, the university’s flagship literary journal, and has published poetry in national and international literary journals. She is the author of Life of the Land: Articulations of a Native Writer (Ai Pohaku Press, 2017). The book was a winner of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.

“We are humbled and honored to have this new endowed chair honoring such an influential and inspirational educator and advocate,” said David Lassner, president of the University of Hawai’i. “As an endowed chair, it will have an impact stretching across generations, creating a new cohort of Dana Naone Hall emeriti chairholders. These leaders and future alumni from our programs will infuse new energy into the application of Hawaiian knowledge, enriching not only our Hawaiian communities, but our world.”