A confrontation with striking students at San Francisco State College in 1968 propelled Vancouver-born Samuel I. Hayakawa, already recognized as a world-renowned semantics expert, into a college presidency and later, to the U.S. Senate.
 

As one of the world's great semanticists, Vancouver-born S.I. Hayakawa, viewed here wearing his signature tam, instantly became world famous when he, acting president of San Francisco State College, confronted striking students determined to shut down the university at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968. [Photo, courtesy San Francisco State College]

Dr. Hayakawa was a professor at the college when some 500 students went on strike to force their demands for changes to several of the college’s policies, particularly to those with regard to minority groups and black studies. When a second president resigned because of the protests that year, the famed semantics professor was appointed acting president and became headline news days later when rioting students refused to turn off blaring loud speakers on a van so that he could be heard. Hayakawa, then 62, strode through the protestors, nimbly scrambled to the roof of the vehicle and yanked the wires from the speakers, all of this action recorded on TV and shown that night to millions of people.

His determination to quell the riots and his efforts to bring law and order to the campus over the next few months earned him the epithet, “the Samurai Scholar.” By June, grateful trustees confirmed his presidency a position he held until 1973.

The son of Ichiro and Toro Hayakawa, Samuel Ichiye was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1906. His father was a Japanese import/export dealer who moved the family of four children to Winnipeg where Samuel completed high school and, in 1927, obtained a BA at the University of Manitoba. A year later he was awarded an MA in English at Montreal’s McGill University and in 1930 began teaching as a graduate assistant at the University of Wisconsin. He received his PhD there in 1935 and, in 1939, joined the staff of Illinois Institute of Technology, first as an assistant, then as associate professor of English.

By then Dr. Hayakawa was already working on his first book dealing with the theories of general semantics advanced by Alfred Korzybski, a Polish scholar whom he met in 1938. The book, entitled Language in Action, became a best-seller when it was published and selected by a book club in 1941. For the next eight years it was the basic text for his lively and incisive lectures on semantics. He also became the founder and editor of ETC, a journal published by the International Society for General Semantics. In 1949 he made major revisions to his original book, calling the new volume Language in Thought and Action. Like its predecessor, it was translated into a number of languages.

Dr. Hayakawa moved to the University of Chicago as a lecturer in 1950 and his popularity on the lecture circuit grew when he produced a series of 13 half-hour shows on general semantics for National Education Television and also conducted, over a Chicago radio station, a series of informal lecture demonstrations on another major interest of his – jazz.

In 1955 he moved to San Francisco State College as a professor with a growing worldwide reputation as lecturer, writer, and editor. He returned to Montreal in 1959 to become the first non-physical scientist to give the prestigious Claude Bernard Lecture at the University of Montreal’s Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery, his topic being the semantic causes of stress. By then, Dr. Hayakawa had also edited Language, Meaning and Maturity and later, in 1959, Our Language and Our World, both books comprised of essays published initially in ETC.

Another book was published in 1963 and, in 1968, his Modern Guide to Synonyms and Related Works concentrated on the development of slang in American English. At the height of the Vietnam War he was teaching only one evening seminar on advanced problems in communication at San Francisco State College when all classes were cancelled in November 1968 following a strike by some 500 students and clashes with city police.

Dr. Hayakawa, sympathetic to some of the demands made by the protesters, felt, however, it was more important to keep the college open. “What my colleagues seem to forget,” he observed during the uprising, “is that we have a standing obligation to the 17,500 or more students – white, black, yellow or brown – who are not on strike and have every right to expect continuation of their education.” It was this stance that prompted the trustees and Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, to appoint him acting president on November 26.

On December 2, he called for the resumption of classes and, when the striking students tried to drown out his remarks that day, his quick reaction as seen on TV screens around the world created a new image for the heretofore humorous, off-beat professor – that of a hard-nosed college administrator. While some faculty and protesting students continued to criticize him, his no-nonsense stance won overwhelming support of the public and enabled him to win confirmation as college president.

His involvement with Congressional committees investigating causes for student unrest and a meeting with President Nixon prompted a number of people to suggest that he enter California politics, but he put aside the idea until the 1976 senatorial race three years later. Then, at age 70, sensing the public’s negative attitude towards politicians in the post-Watergate era, he ran on the Republican ticket and won by more than 250,000 votes. He did not, however, seek a second six-year term but chose to become special advisor to the Secretary of State making trips to such countries as Laos, Thailand, and New Guinea.

He also became chairman of a group called U.S. English, bent on pressing for a constitutional amendment to make English the nation’s official language. “Bilingualism for the individual is fine,” he argued, “but not for a country.” He marked his 50th wedding anniversary in 1987 having married Margedant Peters whom he had met at the University of Wisconsin. He predeceased her at age 85 in 1992.

Mel James