Boston-area campuses receive a schooling in hate
Is shouting anti-Semitic insults while throwing a cup of beer a hate crime? What about posting white supremacist fliers, or mailing a postcard with anti-Semitic rhetoric to a law school professor?
With increasing awareness of hate crimes after the election of Donald Trump, colleges and universities are grappling with the definitions of hate crimes in a way they haven’t before, and reexamining their policies for dealing with offensive acts.
“These are situations that put fear, not just into the individual who is targeted, but the entire community,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks hate groups.
Federal rules require colleges to track hate crimes on their campuses each year. But the rules from the federal Department of Education provide colleges latitude in determining whether offensive incidents — such as those recently at Brandeis University, Emerson College, and Harvard Law School — rise to the level of hate crimes.
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