Should it be illegal for universities to consider the race of student applicants in their efforts to produce a diverse student body? That question will be addressed in a debate between Gary Orfield, Harvard professor of education and social policy, and Ward Connerly, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California, Oct. 21 at 8 p.m. in Cornell's Barnes Hall Auditorium.

The debate is free and open to the public.

John Ford, the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students at Cornell, will serve as debate moderator. Matt Wexler, president of the Cornell Political Forum and Forum Debate Society, one of the event's sponsors, will introduce the debaters.

Orfield and Connerly, both nationally known for their opinions on civil rights and affirmative action in education, were chosen for "their ability to communicate their views and for their excellent reputations in their field," Wexler said.

Orfield is a noted expert on American social policy and school desegregation. His academic interests are in the study of civil rights, urban policy and minority opportunity. Currently director of the Harvard Project on School Desegregation, he is co-author of The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity and Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education,, which looks at policies and rulings he sees as leading to the resegregation of public schools.

Connerly is chair of a new national organization called the American Civil Rights Institute and is a frequent national speaker on race-based preferences in education. As a member of the University of California Board of Regents, he pushed for a vote by the regents in 1995 that ended the university's use of race as a criteria for admissions. Connerly later served as chair of the campaign for the California Civil Rights Initiative (Proposition 209), which was approved in 1996 and bans affirmative action in California.

The format of the event will allow each debater to have 10 minutes for an opening statement and five minutes for a rebuttal. After the opening statements and rebuttals, the debaters will have five minutes to ask each other questions. The debaters also will have 45 minutes to field questions from the audience.

In addition to the Cornell Political Forum and Forum Debate Society, the event's sponsors include the Cornell College Republicans and Young America's Foundation, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Adelphic Cornell Educational Fund, College of Human Ecology, Student Assembly Finance Commission, Cornell Democrats, Minority ILR Student Organization, Mexican Student Association and the Cornell Forensics Society.