Hayakawa Among the Conservatives

Author, lecturer, and long-time liberal Democrat S.I. Hayakawa joined the faculty of San Francisco State College in 1955. A general semanticist, he became acting president of the school during the student strike of 1968-69, and rode the fame generated then into the U..S Senate as a hard-nosed Republican. He was not an effective senator and served only one term, becoming infamous for sleeping during meetings. He also justified the World War II internment of Japanese Americans and Canadians and favored declaring English America's national language. His later image as an anti-immigrant bumbler seems a parody of the man, but an evaluation of the sum of his accomplishments suggests there was much more to him than his opponents concede.