No Sale in the Marketplace of Ideas

"He's not one iota different from George Wallace or the American Nazi party. He should be totally ignored." --Richard C. Lewontin'50, Agassiz Professor of Comparative Zoology.

"It is impossible to discuss him in print." --David R. Layzer '46, professor of Astronomy.

"My demands for diagnosis may be the greatest contribution anyone can make to reduce Negro agony in this country for coming generations. The cover-up of my theories dwarfs Watergate in scope and significance." --William B. Shockley, professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.

William Shockley is a name that arouses more hatred and anger than any other in academia. The shrewish, white-haired Stanford professor, who was awarded the Nobel physics prize in 1948 for inventing the transistor, has become in recent years the prime symbol of the school of thought which maintains that blacks are genetically inferior to whites.

Shockley himself does not put things in terms quite so, well, black and white. He speaks in terms of "thinking exercises" which he says illustrate a high probability that the statistically lower average of black I.Q. scores is due to innate differences in intelligence.

Last week, the name of William Shockley aroused passions here at Harvard when the Law School Forum, a lecture-sponsoring group with a history of controversial speakers (Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Mme. Ngo Dinh Nhu), announced that it would hold a debate between Shockley and Roy Innis, national director of the Congress for Racial Equality.

It didn't take long for the protests to start. First, Derrick A. Bell, the Law School's only black professor, wrote privately last weekend to the forum's president, Howard Brod Brownstein, saying that the debate should be stopped.

Both Brownstein and Bell refused to say exactly what the letter said, and they appeared to have resolved their differences.

Then Monday, as the news of the planned lecture circulated, attacks multiplied. A group of 20 professors calling themselves the Harvard Committee Against Racism came out against the debate and threatened to leaflet the debate if it took place as scheduled. Harvard-Radcliffe SDS announced it would circulate a petition against the debate.

But the most persuasive group to enter the fracas was the Harvard Black Law Students Association, whose president, Francesta F. Ormes, said, "We will not let this discussion go on, nor would any self-respecting, proud ethnic group allow a discussion of this type to be conducted."

Ormes, who did not threaten to disrupt the program, met with the Law Forum's executive board Wednesday which agreed to cancel the debate.

Both Shockley and Innis protested what the latter called "a defeat for the First Amendment," but the Law Forum said it planned to hold a similar program later, after first holding a "debate on the debate."