Free Speech at Issue
An instance in microcosm of some of the complex forces troubling the nation and its institutions of higher learning occurred at Dartmouth October 15 at the close of the three-day fall meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in what is now known on campus as the Shockley incident.
Central figure in the incident was Dr. William Shockley, Stanford University physics professor and Nobel laureate who had availed himself of the right of any member of the Academy to present a contributed paper at any regular meeting upon request. But his paper, scheduled to conclude the session and entitled "Offset Analysis Description of Racial Differences," was not heard. Following his introduction, approximately 30 students - the great majority of them black - began a sustained clapping which prevented Dr. Shockley from presenting his controversial hypothesis, widely reported in the press as suggesting that the black race may be genetically inferior to the white race in intellectual ability.
Because the action of the students constituted what Leonard M. Rieser, Provost and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, later deplored as a "clear and serious violation of the principle of free discourse on which this institution depends for its existence," disciplinary procedures against those students involved have been initiated, and their cases will be heard by the College Committee on Standing and Conduct.
Dr. Shockley has widely expounded his thesis previously, but his request that the National Academy of Sciences endorse his research has been repeatedly rejected by that body and was again rejected at the October NAS meeting held at Dartmouth in honor of the College's Bicentennial. Indeed, Academy President Philip Handler, an eminent biochemist, explained that Dr. Shockley's research recommendations had not been endorsed because the Stanford physicist "has offered no new research programs and no new approaches to psychometric measurement while confusing available data with views concerning the management of welfare programs."
Dr. Shockley took unusual steps to give advance publicity to his appearance and his conclusions, contrary to accepted procedure in the presentation of a scientific paper. He also distributed to all newsmen present copies of his prepared text, which later was published in at least two newspapers and excerpted in others, and read his paper several times informally to students, including black students, who clustered about him during the clapping episode.
A provocative editorial comment by the Manchester Union Leader endorsing the Shockley thesis triggered some student concern prior to the NAS meeting, but less than 30 of the more than 170 black students on campus participated in the disruption. During the clapping episode, a few of the 30 students joined in trying to end the demonstration after hearing Dean Leonard Rieser, Professor John Kemeny, chairman of the Committee on Equal Opportunity, and other facutly members and administrative officers warn that the demonstrating students were not only threatening a cardinal principle on which the freedoms they seek are based but were setting a precedent which could be turned against them.
Although Dr. Shockley was at Dartmouth to speak to the National Academy of Sciences as a member of the Academy and not at the invitation of the College, only three or four of the 75 NAS members attending the conference were present for the Shockley lecture. Efforts to make it possible for Dr. Shockley to speak continued for more than an hour until the conference's scheduled hour of adjournment when his paper was accepted in written form by the session chairman.
