This humble blogger never expected that two schools tied to different chapters of his life — one where he attended in Hong Kong, and one that sits at the heart of Hawaiʻi’s identity — would be fighting lawsuits at the same time.
Yet here we are. Hong Kong International School (HKIS), where this blogger spent part of his youth in the early 1990s, and Kamehameha Schools, an institution deeply intertwined with Hawaiʻi’s history and identity, are now both in court.
One is accused of drifting from the mission it was founded upon. The other is accused of holding to its mission so tightly that it may now violate the law. Different places, different histories — but both face the same question: how does an institution stay true to its purpose when the world keeps changing the rules around it?
That was the first thought when news of the Kamehameha Schools lawsuit broke on Monday, October 20, which reminded this writer that this is not just a Hawaiʻi conversation. Around the world, elite private schools, often founded with a moral or cultural purpose, are being challenged over who they serve, how they operate, and whether their missions still align with the legal and social expectations of today.
Let’s start with the alma mater – HKIS.
PC: PHwSF
HKIS was founded in 1966 as a partnership between the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and business leaders in Hong Kong. The founding promise was simple: an American-style, Christian education open to all children, not just the privileged.
But as Hong Kong became an international financial hub, the school evolved with it. Expatriate executives moved in, companies paid school tuition as part of compensation packages, and local business elites began sending their children there, too. By 1990, HKIS was already seen as a school for the well-off — a place where classmates were the children of Citibank, Northrop, and Price Waterhouse executives. The message was unspoken but clear: if you had the means, you could go.
Over the decades, HKIS became one of the top international schools in Asia, with multi-campus, state-of-the-art facilities, and tuition that climbed higher each year. Today, it holds billions in financial reserves and is building a student activity center with tennis courts, swimming pools, and even an indoor golf simulator.
And that is exactly where the lawsuit begins.
The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod — the same church that helped found HKIS — is suing the school, claiming it has drifted from its original mission. They argue that HKIS was never meant to be a luxury institution for the elite, but a Christian school open to all backgrounds. Instead, they say, it now serves only a narrow, wealthy segment of society while accumulating large surpluses and cutting the church out of its governance. Their hook? They have rights to the land under the Repulse Bay campus, of which they would like to repurpose the place for another new American high school, which the Synod visualizes as better alignment to the original HKIS mission, as they see it.
In short, HKIS and those who run the school are being accused of mission abandonment.
Kamehameha Schools, as we will see next, is being accused of the exact opposite — mission protection at any cost.
PC:Alan Levine from Strawberry, United States, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Kamehameha Schools’ story is one most people in Hawaiʻi know well. Established in 1887 through the will of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the last direct descendant of King Kamehameha I, it was created to educate Native Hawaiian children at a time when their future was uncertain. This was not after the overthrow — it was before it. Pauahi saw the decline of her people firsthand: their population was shrinking, their language and culture were being pushed aside, and foreign interests were growing in power. Her decision to leave her vast estate for the education of Hawaiian children was not mere philanthropy; it was an act of legacy, protection, and quiet resistance.
Today, Kamehameha Schools is being asked a very different question than HKIS. Not “Why did you abandon your mission?” but rather “Can your mission still be legal in the United States?”
Challenges to its Hawaiian-preference admissions policy aren’t new — they’ve been surfacing for decades. The legal groundwork was laid in 2000 with Rice v. Cayetano, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that limiting voting in Office of Hawaiian Affairs elections to Native Hawaiians violated the 15th Amendment’s ban on race-based voting restrictions.
That decision didn’t touch Kamehameha Schools directly, but it sent a warning shot: ancestry-based preference, even when rooted in history and restorative intent, could be seen under U.S. law as racial discrimination. Challenges to Kamehameha soon followed, but were either settled out of court or not pursued further. However, it was known that there would be another challenge; it was only a matter of time before that happened.
And now, that challenge has arrived.
In October 2025, Students for Fair Admissions — the same group that ended affirmative action on the mainland — filed a lawsuit in federal court in Honolulu against Kamehameha Schools. They argue that a private school giving preference to Native Hawaiian children violates federal civil rights law. Kamehameha Schools answers just as directly — that this is precisely what Princess Pauahi established the trust to do, that they take no federal money, and that the school exists because her people were once on the brink of disappearing in their own homeland.
This debate isn’t new. What is different is the moment we’re in. National leaders are actively reshaping civil rights law, and in the process, redefining what “fairness” means in America. Whether intentionally or not, this shift risks overlooking — or forgetting — why Kamehameha Schools was created in the first place.
So here we are — two schools, worlds apart, facing the same kind of reckoning.
HKIS is being accused of drifting from its mission, trading its Christian roots for prestige and exclusivity. Kamehameha Schools is being accused of the opposite — holding to its mission so tightly that it now collides with federal law. One is charged with forgetting why it was founded. The other is being challenged to remember. And at the heart of both lawsuits sits the same question: who is a school really for, and who gets left at the door?
In the end, the missions of these schools haven’t really changed — it’s the world around them that has. Laws shift. Ideas of what’s fair shift. What people expect from private institutions — whether in Hong Kong, London, Boston, or right here in Honolulu — shifts too. And now, schools like HKIS and Kamehameha find themselves in a place their founders probably never saw coming: having to explain whether what they were created to do still has a place in today’s world.
This isn’t about condemning either school or dismissing the purpose they were built on. Far from it. It’s about recognizing something larger at play — that missions born in another time are now being judged by the standards of this one. And whether we like it or not, that conversation is no longer just local. It’s global.