When I started reading Subversives by Seth Rosenfeld, I read that Clark Kerr was the president of the University of California, which started me thinking where did S.I. Hayakawa fit into the picture. I remembered him being involved in student demonstrations in California. I even went to the index of the book to look for his name. Well today on 108th anniversary of Mr Hayakawa’s birthday I found out that I was in the right church (California) and the wrong pew (Berkeley). What I didn’t remember was that Mr Hayakawa was the President of San Francisco State University during those turbulent years from 1968 to 1973. Some background on S.I. Hayakawa….
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and political figure of Japanese ancestry. He was an English professor, and served as president of San Francisco State University and then as United States Senator from California from 1977 to 1983. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he was educated in the public schools of Calgary, Alberta and Winnipeg, Manitoba and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba in 1927 and graduate degrees in English from McGill University in 1928 and the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1935.
I also didn’t remember the specifics of the student demonstrations that he was confronted with, again from Wikipedia…..
During 1968-69, there was a bitter student and Black Panthers strike at San Francisco State University for the purpose of gaining an Ethnic Studies program. It was a major news event at the time and chapter in the radical history of the United States and the Bay Area. The strike was led by the Third World Liberation Front supported by Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers and the counter-cultural community, among others. It proposed 15 “non-negotiable demands”, including a Black Studies department to be chaired by sociologist Nathan Hare independent of the university administration and open admission to all black students to “put an end to racism”, an unconditional, immediate end to the War in Vietnam and the university’s involvement with it. It was threatened that if these demands were not immediately and completely satisfied the entire campus was to be forcibly shut down.[3] Hayakawa became popular with conservative voters in this period after he pulled the wires out from the loud speakers on a protesters’ van at an outdoor rally, dramatically disrupting it.[4][5][6] Hayakawa relented on December 6, 1968 and created the first-in-the-nation College of Ethnic Studies
Ah, it’s starting to come back to me little now. I do remember that he was a conservative Republican, I didn’t know that he organize the Anti Digit Dialing League, a group in San Francisco that opposed the introduction of all digit telephone exchange names. Ok you boomers do you remember the two letters that were in your phone number, For my hometown area it was DU-(Dudley))!
One other nugget from his time as a Senator…..
Hayakawa was elected in California to the United States Senate as a Republican in 1976,[7] defeating incumbent Democrat John V. Tunney. Hayakawa served from January 3, 1977, to January 3, 1983.
During his 1976 Senate campaign, he spoke about the proposal to transfer possession of the Panama Canal and Canal Zone from the United States to Panama. Hayakawa said, “We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square.”[8] However, in 1978 he helped win Senate approval of the Torrijos–Carter Treaties which transferred control of the zone and canal to Panama. [9]
That’s my emphasis there as a conservative Republican, Hayakawa helped the more liberal Democratic president win approval for the Panama Canal Treaty…..because that’s the way our government worked before the Republicans broke it!!!
Anyway now I know! You can read more about S.I. Hayakawa including information about his career as a linguist, psychologist, semanticist, teacher and writer here at Wikipedia.
Links
STRIKE!… Concerning the 1968-69 Strike at San Francisco State College
The San Francisco State College Strike Collection
Black Panther and San Francisco State:On Strike Video
