The anti-war protests against U.S. military involvement in Vietnam during the late 1960s brought what many believe to be a defining moment at the University of Hawai'i's Manoa campus.
From the summer of 1967 to the spring of 1968, UH shed whatever sense of civil, easygoing relations it had among students, faculty and administrators.
It started when the Student Partisan Alliance — an anti-war group advised by Oliver Lee, an untenured assistant professor of political science — produced a manifesto proposing that young men infiltrate U.S. military forces and sabotage them. Pro-war critics were angry at Lee. The Waikiki Lions Club threatened to march up University Avenue to the campus in protest.
Although Lee had been told he would receive tenure, the revelations prompted an about-face. University President Thomas Hamilton, in a move recommended by the dean of Lee's college, rescinded the offer of tenure. A petition signed by a thousand faculty and staff members called for an investigation.
The chairman of Lee's department concluded that Lee's academic freedom had been violated because of Lee's political beliefs. Lee appealed to the Board of Regents, who rejected his request.
When the faculty senate unanimously decided in December 1967 that the university had no just cause to deny tenure, Hamilton resigned — a decision that filled the campus with great dismay. Hamilton was a charismatic president.
On the afternoon of May 20, 1968, with Hamilton serving out his final semester and the pace of anti-war, anti-draft protests picking up nationally, 200 students descended on Bachman Hall to protest the Lee case and present other grievances.
They hung a banner outside the building that dubbed it "Liberation Hall."
It was a forceful though mostly peaceful demonstration, with protesters meeting with Hamilton and other administrators. Students passed a hat for money for food. They sang through the evening. The administration hired a small country-music band for entertainment.
During the evening of the second day of the sit-in, they reached a deal with the administration to allow protesters to leave before police were called. Somehow, it fell apart.
About midnight on May 22, police arrived and arrested about 160 protesters, including Lee. For days thereafter, students returned to Bachman for more singing, discussion, teach-ins and confrontation.
The regents met on May 23 and voted to offer Lee a contract for the 1968-69 school year. Tenure was denied that day, but Lee eventually did receive tenure in 1970.
Something had forever changed, though. Hamilton — widely regarded as having presided over a golden age at the university — was gone, and student activism would never again achieve that critical mass.
Anti-war sentiment continued on the Manoa campus, however, after Harlan Cleveland took over as president. He struck a supportive anti-war tone, canceling afternoon classes after America bombed Cambodia on Oct. 15, 1969, so students could discuss bringing an end to the war.
But Cleveland supported the existence of a Reserve Officer Training Corps program on campus, insisting that the education of future military officers was an option that should not be denied to students.
This was a deeply divisive and emotional issue. In April 1970, demonstrators peaceably occupied the Air Force ROTC building for six days. Nearly a year later, in February 1971, a deliberately set fire destroyed two rooms in an Army ROTC building on the Manoa campus. Outsiders were charged with arson.
Cleveland defended the free-speech rights of students in May 1970 after the Manoa student government organized a weeklong strike of classes to protest the war. More than 3,000 people attended a rally at Andrews Amphitheater as Cleveland ordered that no student be failed or given a lower grade for participating in the strike.
