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Louis
Social Sciences
D222
Herman
Professor of Political Science
808-689-2371

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Louis Herman has spent over 30 years contributing to the political science program at UH West Oahu. He is founder and director of The Institute for a New Political Cosmology.   The mission of the Institute is to integrate indigenous wisdom, evolutionary science and political philosophy into a new story of what it means to be human living in synergy with an evolving earth.

Louis grew up in an orthodox Jewish community in apartheid South Africa in the aftermath of the Holocaust.  The two poles of his formative political experiences were shock at human caused suffering and the beauty and healing power of Southern Africa wilderness. At the age of 12 he left South Africa with his family to receive a science education in England. He obtained degrees in medicine and the history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University and then took a break from academia for three years to get deeper more direct experiences of life.

He emigrated to Israel to explore life on a kibbutz—the agricultural commune which built up the country—and then volunteered for military service in a paratrooper unit.   His participation in a Middle East war confronted him with two hard facts—the futility of war as a solution to political problems and the recognition of Palestinians as an indigenous population.  He returned to study political philosophy at the Hebrew University to contemplate the deeper questions of life—“How should we best live together?’ What is the Good Life?”  

He was invited to complete his PhD at the University of Hawaii, where he found the perfect vantage for developing a global perspective on the human condition.  In 2013 he published Future Primal: How our Wilderness Origins Show us a Way Forward, which presents the politics of indigenous and early hunting-gathering societies as offering profound insights into truth seeking and righteous living which industrial society has lost touch with.

The Institute for a New Political Cosmology works to create an educational and political culture based on the primal truth quest. It presents such a truth-based way of life as the core of the leap in human consciousness adequate to the scale of our global crisis.

Dr. Herman is currently working on a number of projects for The Institute. These include another book  The Truth Quest: A New Political Cosmology

PhD Political Philosophy,University of Hawaii at Manoa 1988

Graduate studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1973-1976

MA History and Philosophy of Science, Medical Sciences; 

Cambridge University England, 1974.

BA History and Philosophy of Science, Medical Sciences.

Cambridge University England, 1970.

 

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Global Futures; Indigenous Peoples and Modernity; Science and the Modern Prospect; Politics and Film; Global Issues: Comparative Politics (South Africa and the Middle East); Environmental Politics; Political Philosophy;  Meaning of Mass Media; Hawaii Politics; American Politics.