Preserving Freedom

THE LAW SCHOOL's decision to cancel a scheduled debate between William Shockley and Roy Innis is an indefensible solution to a difficult, but resolvable problem. The Law Forum created the problem for itself when it invited Nobel Laureate Shockley and CORE president Innis to debate Shockley's controversial genetics theories.

Neither man is an expert in genetics and it is therefore puzzling that the Law Forum invited them to discuss a highly-complex genetic theory with strongly racist implications.

The invitation was ill-advised, but once the Law Forum made the offer, it failed to preserve the principle of free speech when it cancelled the debate in the face of opposition. The Law Forum's purpose is to raise controversy, not to avoid it.

Efforts to limit free speech can succeed only when aimed at the timid; the Law Forum's actions will encourage future attempts to put restraints on the right of free speech.

The Forum's executive board said they decided to cancel the debate because they feared "disruptions." Any pressure on the Law Forum was unfortunate and unnecessary, but it was an insufficient excuse to cancel the meeting. The pressure undoubtedly would have subsided when the speakers demonstrated their ignorance of genetics and the absurdity of their ideas, and the audience expressed bored disapproval.

If the Law Forum had withdrawn its invitation to Shockley and Innis and claimed that the two speakers were unqualified to speak on the subject, the cancellation might have been acceptable. Instead, the executive board chose to blame a shadowy disruptive influence which allegedly threatened to shout down the speakers.

The Law Forum acted improperly in asking two non-experts to debate a genetic theory with socially vicious overtones; it continued to act improperly when it cancelled the discussion.

The Shockley-Innis situation involves two important and inseparable points. An official, responsible group such as the Law Forum should not invite unqualified people to debate highly controversial and highly technical subjects. But once an invitation is extended, anything less than a full debate compromises the principle of free speech.

The Law Forum, a group which believes in academic freedom and freedom of speech, cannot allow itself to be cowed by the possibility of disruption. The Harvard community deserves to hear controversy, and self-censorship is the first step toward curtailment of human rights.

Shockley's ideas on transistors, an invention which won him a Nobel Prize, would be more welcome than his ideas on genetics. But no one should place any limitations on the goods available in the market place of ideas.