Threats Quash Hayden Talk
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SAN JOSE — Assemblyman Tom Hayden’s commencement speech at San Jose City College has been canceled because officials fear violent protests by local Vietnamese, it was announced Wednesday.
The former anti-war activist, now a Democratic assemblyman from Santa Monica, had been scheduled to address the graduation exercises Friday evening at a school where about 40% of the 190 students expected to show up to receive their diplomas are Vietnamese.
Hayden was unavailable for comment, but an aide, Bob Mulholland, said in a prepared statement: “It appears the forces that corrupted Saigon and lost the war in Vietnam, who Mr. Hayden opposed, have regrouped in San Jose. . . . They are threatening violence against the freedom of speech.”
College President Byron Skinner said that Charlotte Powers, president of the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District, will replace Hayden as the commencement speaker, and that Hayden has been invited to speak at the college’s fall convocation ceremony in September.
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