Once-controversial figure in Hawaii tells his story

When Oliver Lee was 39, he was easily the most controversial man in Honolulu.

Because of him in 1968, more than 130 Honolulu police swooped down on to Bachman Hall to arrest 152 students and professors protesting the Vietnam War and Lee’s denial of tenure.

Days earlier, the well- respected president of the University of Hawaii, Thomas Hamilton, resigned when the Manoa campus’ faculty senate issued a report urging that Lee be given tenure. Gov. John Burns, the Kawaiahao Church pastor Abraham Akaka and the president of the state Senate, John Hulten, reacted by saying, "Fire Lee."

Now at 86, Lee has written an autobiography about his time as an intellectual and radical at the University of Hawaii: "Oliver’s Travels — The Making of a Chinese-American Radical."

As early as 1964, Lee, born in China of Chinese and German parents and now a naturalized American, was already giving speeches opposing American foreign policy.

Speaking at the East-West Center, Lee, a University of Hawaii assistant professor of political science, called the developing war in Vietnam "militarily hopeless … and humanely and economically wasteful and morally repugnant."

Lee was a passionate academic. Perhaps left to study history and foreign policy, Lee would have remained in the background.

Recalling his studies at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, Lee writes how he was reading Thorstein Veblen’s "The Theory of the Leisure Class" while a young woman was playing the piano.

"I felt there is something about sitting in a lounge reading a good book, while someone played well on the piano that makes it a unique aesthetic experience."

Lee, a Harvard grad with a Ph.D. from Chicago, was a victim of the McCarthy era as some of his academic idols were blacklisted and Lee lost a Library of Congress job because of the associations. He was both estranged from America and a full-throated voice of protest.

"I almost totally bypassedAmerica’s post-World War II mass culture — Christian religion, veneration of the U.S. Constitution and the American presidency, respect and gratitude toward the U.S. military, consumerism, superficial journalism, vapid television entertainment and fascination with professional sports," Lee writes.

Lee added that he "did not wear the patriotic blinders of conventional America and as a result was able to see clearly the fraudulence and criminality of our country’s war in Vietnam."

By 1967, Lee’s public protests and embrace by the small radical community in Honolulu had become well-known. He was the face of the anti-Vietnam protests, although more intensely controversial than charismatic.

Members of the Waikiki Lions Club asked UH to not renew Lee’s contract, saying, "He should not be permitted to advocate over- throw of our government and preach Communist doctrine to his classes."

Hamilton wrote back that criticizing Lee’s teaching was not uncommon but no objections had ever been substantiated.

Lee denied the charges listed by the Lions.

"Nobody doubts that most of my activities and my ideas are heartily disapproved of by the Waikiki Lions, but fortunately the likes or dislikes of private pressure groups are irrelevant when it comes to judging the professional qualifications and conduct of a university professor," Lee wrote.

"None of these things mean I have turned against my adopted country. On the contrary, it is because I love the American people and cherish the American ideals and institutions of political freedom that I want so much to contribute to a better, nobler, happier and more secure America," Lee concluded.

The controversy came when Lee was offered tenure, but the offer was taken back after a student group he was advising distributed an inflammatory screed.

Lee and supporters saw it as a clear case of threatened academic freedom. Hamilton disagreed.

"I have spent a great deal of energy protecting academic freedom and academic due process. I regret none of it. But it is time for someone to stand up for academic responsibility and I do so now," wrote Hamilton.

The end of the story is that because the UH regents both feared the possible censure by the American Association of Academic Professors and wanting to hire the noteworthy former NATO ambassador, Harlan Cleveland, Lee was granted tenure.

The takeaway from the now mostly forgotten, but once white-hot, controversy is that UH, academic freedom and Oliver Lee can coexist.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.