S. I. Hayakawa

Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was a Canadian-born American academic and politician of Japanese ancestry.

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Hayakawa was educated in the public schools of Calgary, Alberta, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, and graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1927.

He received his MA in English from McGill University in 1928 and his PhD in the discipline from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1935.

Professionally, Hayakawa was a linguist, psychologist, semanticist, teacher, and writer.

He served as an instructor at the University of Wisconsin from 1936 to 1939 and at the Armour Institute of Technology (Illinois Institute of Technology as of 1940) from 1939 to 1948.

His first book on semantics, Language in Thought and Action, expanded its forerunner (and Book-of-the-Month Club selection) Language in Action, written from 1938 to 1941.

With five editions from 1949 to 1991, Language in Thought and Action helped to popularize Alfred Korzybski's general semantics and semantics in general, while semantics or theory of meaning was overwhelmed by mysticism, propagandism and even scientism.

Hayakawa lectured at the University of Chicago from 1950 to 1955.

He presented a talk at the 1954 Conference of Activity Vector Analysts at Lake George, New York, in which he discussed a theory of personality from the semantic point of view.

It was later published as The Semantic Barrier.

The definitive lecture discussed the Darwinism of the "survival of self" as contrasted with the "survival of self-concept."

His ideas on general semantics influenced A. E. van Vogt's Null-A novels, The World of Null-A and The Pawns of Null-A.

Van Vogt in The 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."

Hayakawa was an English professor at San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) from 1955 to 1968.

In the early 1960s, he helped organize the Anti Digit Dialing League, a San Francisco group that opposed the introduction of all-digit telephone exchange names.

Among the students he trained were commune leader Stephen Gaskin and author Gerald Haslam.

He was named acting president of San Francisco State College on November 26, 1968, during a student strike, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California and Joseph Alioto was mayor of San Francisco.

From November 1968 to March 1969, there was a student strike at San Francisco State College in order to establish 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 Black Student Union, Third World Liberation Front supported by Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers and the countercultural community.

The students presented fifteen "non-negotiable demands", including a Black Studies department chaired by sociologist Nathan Hare independent of the university administration, open admission for all black students to "put an end to racism", and the unconditional, immediate end to the War 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.

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.

Hayakawa relented on December 6, 1968, and announced the creation of a Black Studies program at the University.

On July 9, 1969, the California State Colleges Board of Trustees appointed Hayakawa the ninth president of San Francisco State.

Hayakawa wrote a column for the Register and Tribune Syndicate from 1970 to 1976.

Hayakawa retired on July 10, 1973.

In 1973, Hayakawa changed his political affiliation from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and became president emeritus at what became San Francisco State University.

Hayakawa won an unexpected victory in the 1976 Republican Senate primary over three better-known career politicians: former HEW Secretary Robert Finch, long-time U.S. Representative Alphonzo Bell and former California Lieutenant Governor John L. Harmer.

Much like Jimmy Carter, Hayakawa touted himself as a political outsider.

On the Democratic side, incumbent Senator John 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 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 the Watergate 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, and ultimately defeated him by just over three percentage points.

During his Senate campaign, Hayakawa spoke about the proposal to transfer possession of the Panama Canal and Canal Zone from the United States to Panama.

A professor of English, he served as president of San Francisco State University and then as U.S. Senator from California from 1977 to 1983.