By Pauline Hoffmann and Robin Valeri

We too often hear about hate crimes. News stories highlight the bigotry and violence generally associated with hate crimes. But what is a hate crime?

Hate crimes are any crimes that “manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity,” according to the Hate Crime Statistics Act.

Hate crimes differ from hate incidents. Hate incidents are non-criminal acts such as bigoted insults, taunts and slurs.  

Hate crimes are message crimes. They intimidate both the immediate victim and members of the victim’s community and, in their wake, leave the targeted community feeling vulnerable and afraid. While hate incidents may be upsetting, they do not rise to the level of a punishable offense because a crime has not occurred. So, while shouting a racial slur would not rise to the level of a criminal offense because no crime has occurred, painting a racial slur on a garage door could be considered a hate crime because a criminal offense, vandalism, has occurred.

Hate crimes may take place anywhere and at any time, but most recent FBI statistics indicate that just over 10% of hate crimes are reported as occurring at schools and universities, the third largest category for hate crimes by location behind the nearly 27% that occur near residences/homes and the nearly 16% that occur on highways/roads/alleys/streets/sidewalks. 

Hate crimes may include threats, such as bomb threats, physical violence including sexual assault, and some, but not all, mass shootings. Whether a threat or an action, hate crimes result in the need for increased alertness, thorough security sweeps, and heightened fear. 

Extremists often target educational institutions, campus group or organizations because they do not like the values and beliefs taught and/or who is taught. The organization or event’s own promotional materials not only attract likeminded individuals but also identify them as targets for those who hate them.

Schools that educate a specific population, like HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities) make easy targets for those who see these people as problematic in one way or another. In 2022, the FBI investigated a series of threats to HBCUs and other Black institutions and traced them back to one minor. No evidence was found beyond the threats but heightened fear within these communities and resulted in additional actions being taken by these institutions to ensure the safety and security of the members.

In 2014, Elliot Rodger, because of his misogynistic beliefs, went on a killing spree near the University of California, Santa Barbara.  A self-identified “incel” (short for involuntarily celibate), his goal was to kill women. After locating and failing to gain entry to a sorority house, he shot three women outside, killing two. He then continued to drive through Isla Vista, shooting at people, killing one man inside a deli, and driving his car into others. After crashing his car, Rodger killed himself.  Before his spree, Rodger posted a video “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” in which he complained that, “Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love to other men but never to me….You girls have never been attracted to me. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.” 

Rodger’s video and actions have motivated other like-minded individuals to kill women. Tres Genco, inspired by Rodger, planned to shoot sorority students at a university in Ohio. According to the FBI, Genco left a note stating that he hoped for a “kill count of 3,000.” To achieve this end, Genco attended army basic training, conducted surveillance at the university in Ohio, and purchased body armor, guns, and ammunition. 

In 2021, Genco was arrested and charged with attempting to conduct a mass shooting of women and with illegally possessing a machine gun.  In October 2022, Genco pled guilty to planning to commit a hate crime. As with the threats to HBCUs, neither Rodger nor Genco were students at the universities where they targeted students. 

Academic institutions and the people in them are also the targets of recruitment efforts by proponents of hate and extremism. They view students as ripe for recruitment and indoctrination because of students’ accessibility and because students are encouraged to be open-minded, and therefore often willing to consider the viewpoints of others.

While student recruitment is not new, extremist groups began stepping up their campus recruitment efforts surrounding the 2016 presidential campaign. The Anti-Defamation League reported that after the 2016 election of Donald Trump, white supremacist groups launched an “unprecedented outreach effort to attract and recruit students on American college campuses.” The fliers, which have included racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim, propaganda, serve two functions — to send a warning to unwanted groups and to recruit new members to their cause.

NewsPress.com notes that fliers from the white supremacist group American Vanguard were found at the University of North Texas, as well as at Florida Gulf Coast University and other college campuses. In March 2016, fliers exhorting “White Americans… to report any and all illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration,” to “Carry the torch for your people,” as well as other racist flyers were posted at the University of Maryland. The article continues explaining that similar posters were found at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and at Texas Christian University and had been found earlier that year at the University of Maryland.

American Renaissance, a website run by Jared Taylor, in January 2017 encouraged “racial activists” to place free downloadable posters that urged people to free themselves of “White Guilt” in high traffic areas, especially on college campuses, which Taylor described as “bastion[s] of anti-white propaganda.”

Perhaps one of the most infamous campus-related hate incidents occurred on the evening of Aug. 11, 2017, when hundreds of White supremacists from across the United States participated in a torchlight rally, marching around the main quadrangle of the University of Virginia chanting “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us.” The next day, many of the rally participants attended the Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer.

Targeting educational institutions in the cause of hate is not limited to extremists. We see right-leaning media outlets and conservative politicians targeting education. 

These outlets are seeking to curtail discussions of “divisive issues” such as race, ethnicity, and discrimination by demonizing supposedly “ultra-liberal” faculty and their teachings, and politicians are seeking to legitimize and institutionalize hate through book banning and curriculum reform legislation. Classroom discussons or scholarship regarding diversity, multiculturalism, freedom, equity, and other such topics run counter to their beliefs and therefore these topics and the people who teach them need to be silenced.

In 2016, the website “Professor Watchlist,” whose stated mission is “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom” began identifying and encouraging students to expose professors who promote anti-American values and leftist propaganda in the classroom.

One example of an outrage story making national news began at the University of Chicago when a student shared a tweet with over 31,000 followers complaining about a cultural anthropology class titled “The Problem of Whiteness.” It should be noted that however provocative the course title might sound, the course was designed to explore how the racial category of “white” had changed over time.

The student tweeted “Anti-white hatred is now mainstream academic inquiry.” After the tweet went viral, the Chicago Sun-Times, Fox News, and the New York Times all reported on the story. But the tweet resulted in more than a spate of national news stories. Because part of the tweet shared the instructor’s biography and email address (a practice known as doxing), her inbox was filled with hateful language and threats. While many faculty who have been identified by these right-wing media outlets say they will not abandon their research and scholarship, several faculty have also faced doxing.

Several recent studies revealed that African American and LGBTQ+ faculty were more likely to be targets of hate, with LGBTQ+ faculty nearly twice as likely to receive threats of physical violence than were those who identified as straight.

Hate may also take the form of censorship, which includes challenges to book titles in school libraries. According to the American Library Association (ALA) there was a 20% increase in unique titles challenged in 2023 over 2022 and the highest number (695) of challenged titles in the ALA’s 20-year history of collecting data. Most of those book title challenges were to books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

In addition to censorship of books in schools, several states have enacted legislation that would effectively censor education. In March 2022, Pen America reported that, since January 2021, 175 “gag” order bills that prohibit the teaching of certain ideas, concepts or material had been introduced in state legislatures in 40 different states and that, at the time of reporting, 15 had become laws in 13 different states. 

The so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill that Florida adopted in 2017 is an example. Since then, other states have introduced similar or more extreme forms of this legislation, often titled “divisive concepts,” including bans on classes, programs, tests, surveys or questionnaires relating to sex education and efforts to limit or ban teaching related to race or racism.

While these examples of hate at school may be disheartening, the battle against hate in academic institutions is not yet lost.  Students are fighting back against book bans by protesting the book bans, forming their own Banned Book clubs in which they read banned books, and, in at least one instance, filing a lawsuit against their school district to fight the book ban.

The Digitial Public Library of America (DPLA, 2023) has also created a free App, “The Banned Book Club,” which makes e-book versions of banned books available to readers for free. In some states where school censorship bills have been introduced, the bills have not been passed and, some that do pass may be struck down by the courts. 

Finally, there are several resources available to combat hate in educational institutions. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) offers several resources including Preventing violent extremism through education: A guide for policy-makers, as well as separate guides for teachers and for youth. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides information on preventing youth hate crimes and bullying. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice and the Anti-Defamation League’s No place for Hate offer workshops, materials and other resources to help fight hate at schools and universities. 

Robin Valeri is a professor of psychology at St. Bonaventure University. Pauline Hoffmann is an associate professor in the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure.

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Categories: hybrid journalism, Jandoli Institute