Tenure Granted at UH Mānoa

The July 5, 1971 Honolulu Star-Bulletin published the list of University of Hawaii faculty granted tenure at the Mānoa campus. Lauren Ekroth’s name appeared among roughly two dozen colleagues across departments. The announcement carried no departmental attribution — only names.

Ekroth was 36. He had been hired as an assistant professor in the fall of 1967. In May 1968 — five months into his first tenure-track appointment — he had been arrested at Bachman Hall alongside 157 others protesting the denial of tenure to Dr. Oliver Lee. The sit-in was an act on behalf of academic due process, the principle that faculty deserve fair and transparent procedures in appointment and renewal decisions. Three years later, the university that had allowed his arrest extended him the very protection he had risked his position to defend.

Several colleagues tenured in the same cohort had also signed the May 1970 “Peace in Indochina” petition: Ann Boesgaard (also an ACLU of Hawaii board colleague), Samuel Shapiro, Richard Dubanoski, and John Carlson. The logician Irving Copi — whose Introduction to Logic would become one of the most widely used textbooks in the field — received tenure in the same round. None of Ekroth’s activism over the preceding three years — the Bachman Hall arrest, the sanctuary committee chairmanship, the ACLU board, the antiwar petitions — had prevented the university from granting him permanent appointment.