Free Speech For Whom?

Freedom of speech, that right we have to express the most unpopular, even the most outrageous of views. That freedom is the most jealously guarded of our democratic traditions. Still, every now and then a controversy flares where that right is challenged. The case of Stanford Professor Dr. William Shockley is a good example. The year was 1974. The reason for the storm is obvious on network television, radio, and in the print press. Shockley has been emphasizing statistics that show the average American black scores lower on IQ tests than the average white. The reason for that, says Shockley, is heredity, the genes that blacks were born with rather than conditions in which they grew up and live. But that's just the beginning. Shockley goes on to argue that to prevent the overall intelligence of mankind from being polluted by those inferior genes, people with below normal IQ scores, blacks as well as whites, should be offered money to have themselves sterilized. Shockley calls this his voluntary sterilization bonus plan. Bonuses would be offered to everyone to be sterilized. The amount of the bonus would vary. Income taxpayers would be offered no bonus. The bonus would depend upon, and now there's a very important qualifying phrase, best scientific estimates of any genetic disabilities that might be carried. Also, I would propose a $1,000 bonus to be put into a trust fund for every point a person scores below 100 on an IQ test. Though a few other scientists agree that differences in black and white IQ scores merit further study, there is no solid proof whatever that such differences are inherited along racial lines. Scientific knowledge in this area is still so primitive that the experts can't even agree what an IQ test really measures. Though Shockley was awarded a Nobel Prize, he won it in physics as co-inventor of the transistor. He has no formal training in genetics, and most scientists write off his claims as pure speculation based on the flimsiest of data. NO NOBEL PRIZE FOR GENOCIDE. NO NOBEL PRIZE FOR GENOCIDE. THOUGH SHOCKLEY has had ready access to the press, network TV and radio, it's when he tries to speak on the college campuses of our country, at the institutions ostensibly most dedicated to the examination of new, even heretical, ideas, that he has run into trouble. For instance, when a student group invited Shockley and CORE's black president Roy Innis to debate at Princeton, student demonstrators hung and burned Shockley in effigy, and then picketed the hall where he was to debate. Many of them, including one student selling a communist newspaper, demanded that Shockley not be permitted to speak at all. Because his right to speak is going to justify genocide. It's going to just It's going to be used to justify fascism, a fascist society in this country where we won't have the right to print this paper. So in other words, you seem to have rights which you don't want to give them. Exactly. I don't see why a university should give time to someone who has such obviously racial prejudices. You're at a university where you're supposed to be willing to discuss all ideas, aren't you? Sure, but they talk about the principle of the academic freedom and free speech. And those principles mean nothing if they're not intelligently applied. And this shows a great lack of intelligence. Who decides if they're being intelligently applied? The people decide. Who are the people? We are. Shockley finally was able to speak, but campus security was so tight, press coverage so restricted that Roy Innis had refused to show up. His place was taken by Ashley Montagu. At Harvard, it was another story. There, the prestigious Harvard Law School Forum first invited Shockley and Innis, and then when black law students protested, the forum disinvited them. Things were rougher at other universities. Shockley was shouted down and prevented from debating at Staten Island University. The same at Dartmouth. And just a few weeks ago, he was shouted down again at the University of Georgia. THIS MEETING IS CANCELED. WHY DO YOU THINK IT'S SO DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO GET your message across? Well, the the message that I'm trying to get across is I think a very important one for the future of mankind, and one which is very painful to face. And I feel this field is enormously loaded with taboos. People are just unwilling to think about it. If we can get the thinking going, and that's what the First Amendment is really for, I think. Freedom of speech is is not merely a privilege, it's a tool for producing truths. Of all the college campuses caught up in the Shockley controversy, Yale was the place where it raged the longest. It began last December when Roy Innis approached the Student Political Union here to ask that they sponsor a debate between him and Professor Shockley. For years, the Yale Political Union has invited prominent speakers from all shades of the political spectrum. And early in January, the union's executive board decided by a vote of 6 to 3 to hold a Shockley-Innis debate. Fred Kropp is the Political Union president. Why would you want to sponsor a debate between Innis and Shockley, two non-geneticists talking about genetics? The question is, in my mind, do does the Political Union judge who is competent to talk about what? Perhaps it's more dangerous not to let someone speak than to let them speak. And that's why I was in favor of of having them come here. But the Political Union's decision outraged many minority students at Yale. They banded together to form what they called the Third World Coalition to disinvite Shockley and Innis. Law student Elwin Lee is spokesman for the group. He argues that since Yale is a private institution, it is not bound by the constitutional principles of freedom of speech. It's just as if someone comes into your home. You have the constitutional right and privilege to disinvite them, to tell them to leave, to be quiet, if you will, to shut up. Yale also had the right. And what Dr. Shockley has been saying is not really free speech. It is gross defamation. Now, if it's untrue, then can you not get a qualified geneticist to argue with the man and prove it untrue? What's wrong with that? Well, that goes to what is really dangerous about Shockley. Once you legitimize a question, then we'll have people going all around the country trying to figure out whether, in fact, blacks are genetically inferior. If what you say is so, then how come your black brother Roy Innis is going along with him? I don't think he adequately assessed the real danger of the man, the real harm that he could do by coming to Yale. Yale is a very prestigious place, and he in fact wanted to use Yale. CORE president Roy Innis. You went up to Yale and virtually acted as Shockley's booking agent. You were trying You smile, but it's the truth. You wanted a debate between Innis and Shockley at Yale, and Yale was important to you, right? If I was the booking agent for Shockley, then the opponents to the debate were the paid PR agents for Shockley. What do you mean? Because if the strategy of the intent of the people who oppose was to stop Shockley from debating and to stop him from getting notoriety and getting publicity, they are possibly the worst strategists in the entire world, because they have done just the exact opposite. And I think that this may be a self-curing situation. The more there is uh Well, one simple fact is I am communicating to vastly more people tonight as a result of not being able to communicate to this group than would have occurred otherwise. There's also the issue of just the insult of it. To the what? The insult. The insult of having your peers uh implicitly suggesting that the question is valid. And that's on an emotional level, but you know, uh that's very real. These kids are foolish, because these proposals are going to be issued. These proposals are going to be publicized anyway. Shockley disseminates widely his proposal for modified genocide against black people. What make them think that by stopping Shockley from debating me or anybody else will stop Shockley from disseminating his proposals, even to the halls of Congress? The university, whether it's Yale or any other university, is supposed to be open to all ideas. And then, one says that in the marketplace of ideas, the best idea will win. Yeah, I've heard that many times. Good ideas will beat bad, but at what cost? Then what might be the cost be? 6 million Jews, you know, are dead. Good ideas beat bad, but at what cost? At bottom, why do so many white liberals, black liberals, academics, why do you think they oppose you and Shockley coming on to any college campus to debate? I think the white liberal has some kind of a subliminal belief that Shockley might be right. I think they are well-meaning, and they are trying to protect black folks by avoiding this kind of discussion. Mhm. The black academics, many of them have lack of confidence in their own abilities. I think blacks too often accept white values at face value, accept white pronouncements at face values, and they too themselves have a belief in their own inferiority. You've been here for 7 years. You were here when David Hilliard made certain of his uh incendiary comments on this campus. Wrong, because everybody knows that pigs are depraved producers that violate the rights of human beings and that there ain't nothing wrong with taking the life of a mother pig. Um as far as there being a allowed to speak, um I mean, I was in accord with that. Uh Yippies can be heard, Black Panthers can be heard, and Shockley has been heard. One of the few black students who did not go along with the coalition's campaign was Harry Singleton, former head of the Black Law Students Union at Yale. I think that any minority group should protect the right freedom of speech uh vehemently. He should He should be a very, very staunch supporter of freedom of speech. Didn't you try to bring that home to your black brothers in the black uh among the black law students here? Well, I expressed my views on a a number of occasions, but uh as I said, this was a very emotional issue, and people were just didn't really want to hear that at the particular point. And I think that uh most of the people are go along with the idea that people have opinions, and they are they have a right to uh express those opinions, unless your name is Shockley. Faced with opposition from many white students as well, the Political Union Executive Board decided to throw the question of the Shockley and Innis invitation open to a vote of all Political Union members. Over the following weeks, the post-Vietnam political apathy at Yale gave way to the Shockley controversy, as each side lobbied its point of view. The final vote, 190 in favor of the debate, 200 against. Shockley and Innis were disinvited by the Yale Political Union. But no sooner were the results of the Political Union vote made public than another group, Lux et Veritas, a small conservative organization, announced they would invite Shockley to Yale and try to get a scientist, rather than Roy Innis, to debate him. Up to then, the man who lives here had not been heard from. Then, Kingman Brewster, the president of Yale, entered the controversy. He deplored what he called the use of free speech as a game, and he charged that provocation, not understanding, was behind the Lux et Veritas invitation to Professor Shockley. I believe deeply in the ancient Voltairean principle that I will disagree with you, but defend to my death your right to say it. Uh I guess I'm talking about the reverse of that in one sense, and that is the mere fact that I think we must be steadfast in permitting uh even the most outrageous ideas to be expressed doesn't mean that we should uh feel disqualified from saying what we think of either the invitation or the speech. Things have changed, haven't they? I reminded Brewster that back in 1970, he leveled no attack against the radicals who inflamed the Yale campus, while this year he blasted the proposed Shockley debate. Well, I think it was because uh we sensed that uh the participants, as well as those who uh invited them, were in fact more interested in putting on a circus than they were in in anything else. Unable to get support from other student groups, unable to find scientists willing to debate Shockley, Lux et Veritas also backed down. They decided instead to shift the issue from genetics to a talk by law Professor Winter on freedom of speech. We wanted to cover that speech. Lux et Veritas agreed, Professor Winter agreed. But Yale refused, saying they feared that television coverage might spark disruptions. Do you like Shockley? I react to Shockley in exactly the way I react to the majority of white people in this country. Shockley, I think, is no more racist, possibly more honest a racist, than the average American, black or white. So, liking or disliking him is somewhat irrelevant. I think that he is uh he's articulating that which so many believe. And it's important that he be refuted and defeated publicly to destroy the basis for that belief in the many quiet ones that prefer to feel superior to black. The tumult swirling around Professor Shockley and his stormy thesis has subsided with time, but the issue remains. It appears that everyone is in favor of the democratic principle guaranteeing freedom of speech. Nonetheless, when unpopular or outrageous views bump up against a militant opposition, then free speech can suffer. One of the students in the film said that academic freedom and free speech mean nothing if they are not intelligently applied. But who is to make that determination?