DAVID LIVINGSTON CRAWFORD, (1889-1974) for whom Crawford Hall is named, was University president from 1927-1941. Born in a Mormon colony in Sonora, Mexico, he was the son of Matthew A. Crawford and Harriet Sturges, a descendant of early American missionaries in the Pacific He attended Pomona College and Cornell University, graduating as an entomologist. Before coming to Hawaii in 1917, he managed a fruit company in Mexico and taught at Pomona College. He was an athletic coach at the University (then College), head of the entomology department, and head of the University Extension Service.



Among his accomplishments as University president was the development of the University summer school program which was to become one of the largest in the nation. An activist in the Institute of Pacific Relations, Crawford was among those who believed ardently in internationalism as an avenue to world peace, and was on record as recommending on behalf of the Institute that the United States should grant Japan extensive concessions in order to prevent war. The Pearl Harbor attack intervened before the Institute forwarded its formal recommendation to Washington.

Crawford resigned shortly before the Pearl Harbor attack. He worked for the War Production Board in Puerto Rico and later with the United States Foreign Exchange Commission in Mexico. With his wife he was author of Missionary Adventures in the South Pacific, an account of the missionary experiences of his family descendants. From 1948-1954 he was president of Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. He died in 1974.

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* Day, A. Grove. History Makers of Hawaii (Mutual, 1984)
* Hooper, Paul F. "A Footnote on the Pacific War." Hawaiian Journal of History 9 (1975) 121-127.
* Kobayashi, Victor N. Building a Rainbow (Hui o Students, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1983)