Group Pickets Wilson Lecture; Crowd Packs Science Center

Two Science Center lecture halls were overflowing last night with an audience waiting to hear E. O. Wilson, Baird Professor of Science, discuss his original theories of sociobiology. Outside the lecture hall, more than thirty demonstrators were protesting what they called Wilson's "racist" theories.

Five members of the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR)--one of several groups which have protested Wilson's "Sociobiology" course in the past--started demonstrating at about 7:30 last night at the main contrace to the Science Center, marching in a circle, shouting alogans--such as "What Wilson writes in his books, the Klan and the Nazis carry out on the streets,"--and carrying placards that stated, "Profits-Cause Racism, Genes Don't." One of the members of the group addressed passersby using a bullborn.

The protesters' number swelled to about twenty-five shortly before 8 p.m., when Wilson's lecture began. The demonstrators then marched inside where they continued picketing during the lecture.

In a question and answer period after his lecture, Wilson responded to a set of emotional questions with complex and nonpolitical answers. The solution to scientific controversies, he concluded, "is not the curtailment of science. The solution is to extend hard science--value-free science," he said, adding that "there is no boundary between the natural sciences and the social sciences."

In response to accusations of racism, Wilson said his disagreement with INCAR was "largely a misunderstanding. I've presented some of the most powerful arguments against racism I think there are."

Wilson's theories of sociobiology hold that an individual's characteristic are determined partly by genetic and partly by environmental factors.

Other groups in addition to INCAR also participated in the demonstration. Larry Hambrecht, a member of the Progressive Labor Party, described Wilson as a "Social Darwinist." "It's in the interest of the ruling class to give a Pulitzer and a Harvard position to Wilson because he says the status quo is because of human nature," he said.

Bradford C. Mank '83, president of the South Africa Solidarity Committee, said that Wilson is not a racist, but that "the sort of ideas he puts forth lead to a racist mentality."