Free Speech at Yale

In recent years, the question of what limits, if any, should be put on persons advocating highly controversial views has been hotly debated on university campuses, the traditional American citadels of free speech. The man at the center of the storm has often been Physicist William Shockley of Stanford University, who theorizes that blacks are genetically inferior to whites. On April 15, 1974, a group of howling students, stomping their feet and shouting slogans, made it impossible for Shockley to address an audience at Yale University.

In the wake of that demonstration, Yale President Kingman Brewster appointed a student-faculty committee, headed by Historian C. Vann Woodward, "to examine the condition of free expression at Yale." Early this month the panel declared that interference with free speech should be a punishable offense, even when talks are deemed "defamatory or insulting." The only exception would be "if a speech advocates immediate and serious illegal action, such as burning down a library, and there is danger that the audience will proceed to follow such an exhortation."

Brewster endorsed and toughened the findings, then passed them on for final approval to the Yale Corporation, the university's board of trustees. If the corporation agrees, any Yale student--or faculty member--who is found guilty of disrupting free speech could be suspended for a year.

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