THE PROPAGANDA OF OCCUPATION: Statehood and the Cold War

In December of 1949, the president of the University of Hawai‘i, Gregg M. Sinclair, sent an official invitation to the nationally renowned publicist Edward L. Bernays. One of New York City’s most notorious “mad men”—a name for the advertising agents who worked along Madison Avenue—Bernays would be a visiting professor of public relations for the summer session of 1950.¹ Sinclair offered Bernays a hotel room at the posh Halekulani Hotel and invited him to teach five seminars to juniors and seniors. By the time his seminars began, however, the twenty-person enrollment had expanded to fifty and the students