Gilder Speaks!

Is what signs around the campus proclaimed last month. George Gilder, author of Sexual Suicide and NakedNomads, argues that the stability of the social order depends on maintaining the traditional roles of male as provider and achiever and female as mother and homemaker. His critics, most of them women, accuse him of espousing biological determinism, a term sometimes invoked to "prove" the inequality of the sexes. After considerable verbal tumult Gilder did speak, to a packed house and reasonably good-humored choruses of hisses and cheers - but with no interference.

Gilder's appearance - or threatened non-appearance - had become a cause célèbre, frequently compared to the Shockley affair a few years ago, for several weeks prior to his speech, which was finally sponsored jointly by the Student Forum, the Committee for Intellectual Alternatives, and the American Forum.

The issue of freedom of speech - or, more accurately, the issue of whether freedom of speech was the issue or not - was raised when the Tucker Foundation rescinded an earlier invitation to Gilder to discuss his theories as part of a series on male-female relationships.

When his acceptance was first announced, members of the Women's Caucus protested to Tucker Dean Warner R. Traynham '57 that the exposition of such an anti-feminist position would not contribute to a discussion aimed at promoting understanding between men and women on a newly coeducational but dominantly male campus. Traynham, disclaiming prior knowledge of Gilder's views - "a grievous fault, grievously answered for," he noted ruefully later - after further informing himself, drew the same conclusion and withdrew the invitation.

With the letters-to-the-editor columns of The Dartmouth providing the main forum, charges of censorship and counter-charges of legitimizing oppression flew back and forth. The role of a college as a marketplace for the free exchange of ideas and the responsibility of such organizations as the Tucker Foundation to expend limited resources on all opposing views were hotly debated. Many argued that all shades of opinion deserve a hearing in an intellectual climate; others likened Gilder's appearance in a series on harmony between the sexes to a Nazi speaking at a colloquy on anti-semitism or a flat-earther at a geology symposium. Traynham protested that he had no wish to interfere with Gilder's right to express his views, but that the Tucker Foundation had no duty to sponsor him.

Gilder finally did speak - mostly about the plight of the single male - his appearance rescheduled under the auspices of the Student Forum and the conservatively oriented American Forum and the Committee for Intellectual Alternatives. Unlike the Shockley incident, there were no pickets and no demonstrations. His comment that males are sexually inferior and want to assume another role to equal the role of women drew little response until he noted the fact that it hadn't. His point that 66 per cent of menial labor in the Soviet Union is done by women drew cheers of "right-on" from males in the audience. The loudest chorus of hisses was elicited by his remark that Dartmouth wasn't the first to cancel one of his lectures - "Yale preceded you by two weeks."