SHOCKLEY'S RIGHTS

To the Editors of The Crimson:

"Freedom of speech" cannot be invoked to defend William Shockley against those who forced the cancellation of his debate with Roy Innis. Professor Shockley has been given much freedom--in media groups--to state a theory based on the most meager data relating IQ to race. The theory has been discussed again and again with no major addition or revision of the data, to the point where objections by serious geneticists are grouped under "opponents of Shockley's theory" or "alternative explanations".

A debate with Innis would not expose Shockley as unscientific, but would give him a kind of legitimacy as a political opponent of Innis, as someone proposing social policy who also is an "intellectual". What results is a war of credentials--professor of physics and Nobel winner versus distinguished civil rights leader.

For the past few years I've been amused by the charge that radicals receive attention (at universities, in the media) through spectacle rather than through airing their views in rational debate. We come to assume that speeches and discussion groups are rational because they are set in the university--where all sides are heard--and involve acknowledged experts. But in the case of Jensen-Shockley-Herrnstein one side is heard more often than others, and in the case of Shockley alone, no acknowledged expert is involved.

Given the way academics, especially ones associated with Harvard, are pounced upon to provide rationalizations for social policy, the now well-publicized school of intelligence research should be allowed no more spectacles in Time, The Atlantic, or under the auspices of a Harvard Law forum. Chuck Stephen '76