During his tenure at UCLA, one of the students enrolled in his class was Jim Morrison, later to be a cofounder and lead vocalist of the American band The Doors.

[9] The Vietnam War, however, put an end to Hirschman's academic career;[3] he was fired from UCLA after encouraging his students to resist the draft.

[11][12][13] He was remembered by the San Francisco Chronicle as, "a scholar and translator in nine languages who threw over a career as a college professor for the life of a proletarian North Beach poet.

He also translated over two dozen books into English from languages including Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Persian, Russian, Albanian, and Greek.

[17][18] In his Poet Laureate inaugural address, Hirschman envisioned creating an International Poetry Festival in San Francisco, reprising a great tradition from the city's literary past.

[4] Hirschman continued his work supporting the literary community and was the key organizer for the now biennial San Francisco International Poetry Festival.

He stated in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, “The most important thing as a poet is that I worked for the Communist movement for 45 years, and the new class of impoverished and homeless people.”[2] In 1954, Hirschman married Ruth Epstein,[3] whom he'd met and dated when they were students at CCNY.

[25] Following graduation, Ruth became a program director for KPFK and eventually general manager of Santa Monica public radio station KCRW.