A scheduled speaking appearance at Wellesley October 23 and 24 by Far Eastern expert Owen Lattimore set off a chain of protest among some Wellesley alumnae yesterday.

Lattimore, recently the center of a Congressional investigation of Communist infiltration into the State Department, is slated to speak at Wellesley's Mayling Soong Foundation Institute in Far Eastern Affairs. A professor at Johns Hopkins University, he is one of six experts holding "varying points of view" invited to address the Institute.

Margaret Clapp, president of Wellesley, said the college had received about an equal number of letters from alumnae protesting and praising the invitation of Lattimore to speak. Defending Wellesley's action in requesting Lattimore to join the lecture series, President Clapp said, "Wellesley has always stood for freedom of speech. It will continue to do so."

Diverse Views

"As a liberal arts college," she continued, "Wellesley seeks to have diverse points of view presented by scholars and experts in their fields so that its students may consider various aspects of a subject and for themselves be able to determine what they believe to be the truth."

Lattimore, a sharp critic of the Chiang Kai-Shek Government, was cleared of the charge that he was a top Communist agent by a Senate Foreign Relations sub-committee.