THIS WEDNESDAY, Harvard students will once again have to decide how strongly they believe in freedom of speech. And if past history offers any clue, they will decide that freedom of speech exists at Harvard only if the speaker is saying something they agree with.

William Coors, president of the racist and unionbusting Adolf Coors Brewing Company, will speak Wednesday night at Harvard in yet another intentionally provocative and offensive event sponsored by the Conservative Club.

There is no question that Mr. Coors is a particularly distasteful character and his company is a particularly outrageous one. The Coors company, maker of a popular beer, long has been the subject of a nationwide boycott for what participants call its ruthless and repeated crushing of unions formed by employees.

William Coors has made racist public statements about Blacks, And his company has been cited numerous times for discriminatory hiring practices.

There is also no question that students if they feel strongly enough, should gather outside Science Center B with placards and chant so Mr. Coors understands that most members of the Harvard community disapprove of what he stands for.

WHAT IS a question is whether students will go too far in demonstrating their anger. The past several years are filled with instances of conservative speakers finding themselves unable to address the Harvard community without serious disruption.

Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger had ketchup thrown at him when he spoke several years ago. Two years ago, in a move admittedly designed to provoke liberals more than enhance campus debate, the Conservative Club brought a South African official to Cambridge. The strategy worked, as a raucous mob of students assembled outside Lowell House and prevented the consul from leaving the campus. It took a phalanx of policemen and a decoy to maneuver the consul from the house.

This fall, the Law School Forum was forced to relocate a speech by mayor of Philadelphia Wilson Goode after soot-covered Cambridge youths rolled on the ground and--in a non-too-subtle protest of Goode's bombing of a radical group's headquarters--called the mayor a Nazi murderer.

We know that when Mr. Coors arrives Wednesday to speak at the Science Center he will be prepared to tell some clever lies about his company and those who oppose its practices. But if Harvard students want to maintain possession of the moral high ground they earn by protesting such villainous characters, they will have to make sure that their protests do not get out of hand. In an open community it is simply unacceptable to curtail the freedom of speech of any speaker, unless he is trying to incite violence through his remarks.

LET MR. COORS tell his side of what Conservative Club posters mislabel "The Coors Controversy." We should make sure he realizes that we don't believe anything he says, but we can do it without disrupting the speech itself and without limiting his freedom to move about this campus. We can do it without discouraging future speakers from coming.

If the campus protests the Coors speech with restraint, Harvard not only will declare its opposition to racism and antiunionism, but also will prove its support for the right of every individual to speak without fear of intimidation.