S. I. Hayakawa | |
|---|---|
 Hayakawa in 1981 | |
| United States Senator fromCalifornia | |
| In office January 2, 1977 – January 3, 1983 | |
| Preceded by | John V. Tunney |
| Succeeded by | Pete Wilson |
| 9th President ofSan Francisco State University | |
| In office November 26, 1968 – July 10, 1973 | |
| Preceded by | Robert Smith |
| Succeeded by | Paul Romberg |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (1906-07-18)July 18, 1906 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died | February 27, 1992(1992-02-27) (aged 85) Greenbrae, California, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican (from 1973) |
| Other political affiliations | Democratic (before 1973) |
| Spouse | Margedant Peters |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | University of Manitoba (BA) McGill University (MA) University of Wisconsin, Madison (PhD) |
| Academic background | |
| Thesis | Oliver Wendell Holmes: Physician, poet, essayist (1935) |
| Influences | Alfred Korzybski |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | English |
| Sub-discipline | Semantics |
| Institutions | University of Wisconsin, Madison Armour Institute of Technology University of Chicago San Francisco State College |
| Notable works | Language in Thought and Action |
Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (Japanese:早川 一衛,[1] July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and politician of Japanese ancestry. A professor ofEnglish, he served as president ofSan Francisco State University and then asU.S. Senator fromCalifornia from 1977 to 1983.
Hayakawa was born inVancouver,British Columbia toJapanese immigrants. Hayakawa advocated for Japanese Canadian voting rights in the 1930s. In the 1950s he became a professor at theUniversity of Chicago before moving to teach English atSan Francisco State College. After becoming acting president of San Francisco State College, Hayakawa became aconservative icon after he pulled out the wires from the loudspeakers on student protesters' van at an outdoor rally.
Hayakawa defeated incumbentDemocratic senatorJohn V. Tunney in 1976, becoming the firstAsian American Senator from California. Hayakawa supported former California governorRonald Reagan in the1980 presidential election. He initially sought reelection in 1982 but bowed out of the race due to a lack of funds. RepublicanPete Wilson succeeded Hayakawa in the US Senate.
His parents were Japanese immigrants Ichiro Hayakawa and Otoko Toro (née Isono) Hayakawa.[2] Born inVancouver,British Columbia, Hayakawa was educated in the public schools ofCalgary,Alberta, andWinnipeg,Manitoba, and graduated from theUniversity of Manitoba in 1927. He received hisMA in English fromMcGill University in 1928 and hisPhD in the discipline from theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison in 1935.[3]
Advocacy for Japanese Canadian Voting Rights
In 1936, the Japanese Canadian Citizens' League, an organisation created to fight for Japanese Canadian voting rights, sent a four-person delegation to speak to the federal government. Hayakawa was chosen alongside schoolteacherHide Hyodo Shimizu, dentist Dr. Edward Banno, and insurance agent Minoru Kobayashi.[4]At that time, those who could not vote in provincial elections also could not vote in federal elections. Since Japanese Canadians had been denied the vote in British Columbia, where the bulk of Canada's Japanese population lived, most Japanese Canadians also could not vote in federal elections.[5]On May 22, 1936, in Ottawa, the delegation presented to the Special Committee on Elections and Franchise Acts, which was discussing the possibility of granting voting rights to Japanese Canadians. Despite the fact that all four delegates were Canadian born and that Hayakawa was an English professor, the committee members seemed surprised by their fluency in English. One said, they spoke "English so fluently that if [they] did not see [them] face to face [they] would take [them] to be Englishmen." Another congratulated them "on their splendid command of the English language" and "on what they [had] done to help built up Canada."[6] Nonetheless, the delegation returned home only to learn that the committee had decided to deny Japanese Canadians the franchise, which they would not receive until after the Second World War.[5]
Hayakawa lectured at theUniversity of Chicago from 1950 to 1955. He presented a talk at the 1954 Conference of Activity Vector Analysts[7] atLake George,New York, in which he discussed a theory of personality from the semantic point of view. It was later published asThe Semantic Barrier. The definitive lecture discussed theDarwinism of the "survival of self" as contrasted with the "survival ofself-concept." His ideas on general semantics influencedA. E. van Vogt's Null-A novels,The World of Null-A andThe Pawns of Null-A. Van Vogt inThe World of Null-A (i.e., non-Aristotelian) makes Hayakawa a character, introducing him as: "Professor Hayakawa is today's Mr. Null-A himself, the elected head of the International Society for General Semantics."[8]
Hayakawa was an English professor atSan Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) from 1955 to 1968. In the early 1960s, he helped organize theAnti Digit Dialing League, a San Francisco group that opposed the introduction of all-digittelephone exchange names. Among the students he trained were commune leaderStephen Gaskin and authorGerald Haslam. He was named acting president of San Francisco State College on November 26, 1968, during a student strike, whenRonald Reagan wasgovernor of California andJoseph Alioto wasmayor of San Francisco.[9] On July 9, 1969, theCalifornia State Colleges board of trustees appointed Hayakawa the ninth president of San Francisco State.[10] Hayakawa retired on July 10, 1973.[11][12]
Hayakawa wrote a column for theRegister and Tribune Syndicate from 1970 to 1976. In 1973, Hayakawa changed his political affiliation from theDemocratic Party to theRepublican Party and became president emeritus at what became San Francisco State University.[13]
From November 1968 to March 1969, there was astudent strike at San Francisco State College in order to establish anethnic studies program.[14] It was a major news event at the time and chapter in the radical history of theUnited States and the Bay Area. The strike was led by the Black Student Union,Third World Liberation Front supported byStudents for a Democratic Society, theBlack Panthers and the countercultural community.[citation needed]
The students presented fifteen "non-negotiable demands", including aBlack Studies department chaired by sociologistNathan Hare independent of the university administration, open admission for all black students to "put an end to racism", and the unconditional, immediate end to theWar in Vietnam and the university's involvement. It was threatened that if these demands were not immediately and completely satisfied the entire campus was to be forcibly shut down.[15] Hayakawa became popular with conservative voters during this period after he pulled out the wires from the loudspeakers on a protesters' van at an outdoor rally.[11][16][17] Hayakawa relented on December 6, 1968, and announced the creation of a Black Studies program at the university.[18]
Hayakawa launched a campaign for the U.S. Senate in1976, and won an unexpected victory in the Republican primary over three better-known career politicians: formerHEW SecretaryRobert Finch, long-time U.S. RepresentativeAlphonzo Bell and former California Lieutenant GovernorJohn L. Harmer. Much likeJimmy Carter, Hayakawa touted himself as a political outsider.
On the Democratic side, incumbent SenatorJohn Tunney faced a surprisingly strong challenge from another political outsider,Tom Hayden. Hayden's extremely liberal candidacy forced Tunney to run more to the left in the primary, which hurt him in the general election.
Nevertheless, Tunney was favored[by whom?] to easily win re-election. Comfortably ahead in the polls, Tunney did not aggressively campaign until the final weeks before the election. But Hayakawa's position as a political outsider was popular in the wake of theWatergate scandal. In addition, Tunney had a high absenteeism rate while serving in the Senate and missed numerous votes. Hayakawa exploited this with a television ad that showed an empty chair in the U.S. Senate chamber. Hayakawa gradually closed the gap with Tunney, andultimately defeated him by just over three percentage points.[citation needed]
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During his Senate campaign, Hayakawa spoke about the proposal to transfer possession of thePanama Canal andCanal Zone from the United States toPanama, stating, "We should hang on to [the Panama Canal]. We stole it fair and square."[19] In 1978 he helped win Senate approval of theTorrijos–Carter Treaties, which transferred control of the zone and canal to Panama.[20] He also supported a bill that led to the creation of theCommission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, which examined the causes and effects of theincarceration of Japanese Americans duringWorld War II.[21] During his time in the Senate, Hayakawa was one of threeJapanese Americans in the chamber, the other two beingDaniel Inouye andSpark Matsunaga, both ofHawaii.[citation needed]
Hayakawa was news media reporters' favorite fodder, as he was often found napping through important legislative voting.[22]
He planned to run for re-election in 1982 but trailed other Republican candidates badly in early polls and was short on money. He dropped out of the race early in the year and was ultimately succeeded by RepublicanSan DiegoMayorPete Wilson. To date, he is the only Japanese American Republican to have served in the U.S. Senate.
Hayakawa andJohn Tanton founded the political lobbying organizationU.S. English, which is dedicated to makingEnglish theofficial language of the United States.[23][24][25] Despite his support for creating the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Hayakawa, who lived inChicago as a Canadian citizen during World War II and thus was not subject to confinement,[22] argued that theinternment of Japanese Americans was beneficial and that Japanese Americans should not be paid for "fulfilling their obligations" to submit toExecutive Order 9066.[21][26]
Hayakawa was a resident ofMill Valley, California. His daughter, Wynne Hayakawa, is a painter.[27]
He had an abiding interest intraditional jazz and wrote extensively on that subject, including several erudite sets of albumliner notes. Sometimes in his lectures on semantics, he was joined by the respected traditionaljazz pianistDon Ewell, whom Hayakawa employed to demonstrate various points in which he analyzed semantic and musical principles.
He died at a hospital in nearbyGreenbrae, California, on February 27, 1992, at the age of 85, from complications of a stroke and bronchitis.[22]
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Media related toS. I. Hayakawa at Wikimedia Commons| Academic offices | ||
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| Preceded by Robert Smith | President ofSan Francisco State University 1968–1973 | Succeeded by Paul Romberg |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Republican nominee forU.S. Senator from California (Class 1) 1976 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. Senate | ||
| Preceded by | U.S. Senator (Class 1) from California 1977–1983 Served alongside:Alan Cranston | Succeeded by |
| Class 1 |  | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 3 | ||
