Under pressure from the AAUP, the Board of Regents reinstated Lee's tenure.

'I would be right there'

Lee still speaks of the tenure battle with victory in his voice and says many in the university remained supportive throughout the struggle.

"A lot of them felt the victory was a victory for academic freedom," he explains. "Rather than hurting the university, it was benefiting the university."

But when he retires this month, after 38 years at UH, Lee remains an assistant, not a full, professor and so will not be called "emeritus"--something he blames on his earlier activism.

After the controversy, students continued to take Lee's classes on American foreign policy and US-China relations, Lee says, and he suspects some of them came because of his reputation.

He continues to organize protests on occasion, having found a "good many causes over the years." Last month, he walked the picket line during the two-week UH faculty strike. When the Asian Development Bank held its annual meeting in Hawaii, Lee was one of about 600 protesters.

Lee laments the loss of "excitement" and the "sense of efficacy" that was present in the 1960s though, saying the results of recent protests have been "not terribly impressive."

He writes newspaper columns--on Taiwan, Tibet, Iraq, Kosovo and other topics--though fewer these days. But he insists that age has not mellowed his activism.

"There hasn't been the kind of outrage in American foreign policy that there was in the Vietnam years, not so massive and not so long-lasting," he says.

As for longing to return to the activism of the Vietnam era, Lee says "God forbid" there be another such war. But, he adds, "if it were to happen, I would be right there."