The On-Again, Off-Again Yale Debate

You have to give William B. Shockley credit for one thing: he doesn't like to take "no" for an answer.

This week Shockley's campaign to tell the Ivy League world that blacks are less intelligent than whites suffered another setback when a Yale University organization decided to revoke its invitation to Shockley and Roy Innis, national director of the Congress on Racial Equality.

Shockley said the Yale cancellation "only proves my point [that] universities do not encourage belief in the power of inquiry to find truth."

After the Yale Political Union halted plans for the debate last weekend in a 200-190 vote, a conservative Yale alumni group, Lux et Veritas, began talking about scheduling the debate under its own auspices. Despite criticism from Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. and the Yale Corporation, Lux et Veritas hunted around for a few days for a new debate opponent for Shockley. But by midweek, it, too, had dropped the idea of a new Shockley debate and is now trying to schedule a forum on what it calls the possible "erosion of traditionally liberal committment to free and open discussion."

Shockley did have at least one bright spot in his week, however, when the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a statement criticizing "attempts to suppress unpopular opinions"

Although the AAUP statement did not say exactly whose opinions were being suppressed, it obviously referred mainly to Shockley and his controversial attempts to debate in the Ivy League.

But it's doubtful that the AAUP statement will sway anyone. Harvard and Yale have already cancelled, and Princeton hosted the biggest demonstration in the Ivy League this year when Shockley spoke there in December. Few northeastern colleges are likely to be keen on the idea of standing up for Shockley's freedom of speech by scheduling yet another debate.