Threats Quash Hayden Talk
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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