Cambodia

Asian History at Cabrillo
I was in my second year as a faculty member at Cabrillo College.  I was hired to teach the history of Asia and some U.S. History as required.  In the 1960s, while a graduate student, high school teacher and baseball coach (Elk Grove) I had studied Asian History at the East-West Center, Honolulu, and traveled to East and Southeast Asia courtesy of the State Department.  The magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia is one of my favorite places on earth. My Asian History classes at Cabrillo were large and boisterous.  The Vietnam War fueled the interest in Southeast Asian History, and those classes also included returning Vietnam Vets studying on the GI Bill.  

It was, despite the inherent human tragedy of it, a magical time to be teaching about Southeast Asia to students who were vitally interested.  Classrooms filled with students who might be going to Vietnam and veterans just returned.  In the 50+ years of teaching since, I’ve never experienced the energy of those classrooms.  It was, for many students a matter of life and death. 

Nixon’s announcement went through my students and heart like a thunderbolt as it did to hundreds of thousands across the country.  My Asian history class swelled that next Monday, and as luck would have it, we were dealing with the history of Southeast Asia after World War II, Dien Bien Phu, the departure of the French, and the events leading to U.S. involvement.  I had been thrown an educational “fat pitch.”

Kent State 
That Monday, May 4, at Kent State University, Ohio, everything changed as Ohio National Guard troops killed four students and wounded nine others.  President Nixon had escalated the war in Asia, and the Ohio National Guard had cranked up the anti-war movement at home.

Note:  There is a lengthy piece in the current New Yorker on Kent State and the event surrounding it, utilizing 50 years worth of research, writing and singing: www.newyorker.com

Demonstrations broke out on college campuses across America and there was some violence at places like UC Berkeley. It all spilled over into UCSC and Cabrillo, but without the violence.  An estimated four hundred UCSC students assembled that evening on the Lower Plaza and a faculty member standing on the Post Office steps led the group in singing “We Shall Overcome.”  The demonstrations in Santa Cruz were peaceful.  

Governor Reagan Shuts ‘Em Down
Meanwhile, then-Governor Ronald Reagan decided, as a preventative measure, to order all university and state college campuses to close for the remainder of the week.  Dr. Robert Swenson, Cabrillo College President, convened a meeting of faculty and students leaders to determine how Cabrillo should respond to the governor’s order.  There was some question about whether junior colleges were covered by the order.  

I was present at the meeting, and remember the swirl of opinion in it, ranging from shutting down to “business as usual.”  Under the steady and damn-smart leadership of Bob Swenson, and Vice President of Instruction Floyd Younger, the group settled on a combination – a  hybrid teach-in.  Faculty desiring to continue teaching their respective subjects could do so, but at 11:00 AM on Wednesday, the college would sponsor a forum on Vietnam and Cambodia. 

Six faculty members would make presentations: Peter Farquhar took the geography, Ken Neary, the domestic politics, Fred Schuierer,    the biology and environment, Don Young, the region’s literature, Merritt Robbins the regional politics, and I got the history.  An invitation went out to the public to join us. We had no idea what would happen.  Would anyone show up?  Would there be protestors? 

The Teach-In
At 11:00 AM on Wed., May 6, to quote the local newspaper, the Cabrillo College Theater was “jammed.”  People were sitting in the aisles and spilling out into the courtyard.  We’d not had time to gear up any audio-visual as we didn’t have much in those days.  I used a map of East and Southeast Asia on an easel which must have looked like a postage stamp from the audience. There were many community members in attendance.  And they were rapt – pinned – We couldn’t have had a more receptive audience.  They wanted to know what the hell was going on out there across the Pacific.   And we told them how it had all evolved – dispassionately, loyal to our respective disciplines.  This wasn’t a rally.  It was education at its finest. 

The newspaper ad
The faculty took up a collection and historian Brad Smith and some of our more eloquent senior faculty fashioned a statement and we took out an ad that ran in the Sentinel on May 7. The statement is here  and the signatories are here.  A wonderful snapshot of most of the 1970 faculty.  The “Edward” Lydon was my official paycheck name, though I only answered to Sandy then as now. 

We had defied the Governor and taught our community and students.  We then did a repeat performance on Wednesday evening May 12 to another full house.  Then, with the end of the semester close by we put together some cross-disciplinary short course focusing on Vietnam to semester’s end.  

I’d like to think that besides diffusing a potentially volatile situation we helped educate our students and the wider community, and ourselves. We often refer to it as the “Cabrillo way.” 

By 1972 there was no more nice nice in Santa Cruz County and in May the police batons came out and heads were broken.  For another time. 

Acknowledgements:  I am forever grateful for the advice and counsel of a trio of Vietnam vets who enriched those classes beyond measure: Frank Mantua, Gus Erbes, and Ben Dunn.  And to Bernard Fall(1928-1967) whose writings guided me though the tangled web the US had woven in Southeast Asia.  His book Street without Joy (1961) was the best book on Vietnam pre-US involvement, and still is a classic on counterinsurgency.