Minority-Targeted Crimes Still Happen At Liberal Univs.

To the editors:



In “Lovin’ ‘Hate Crimes’” (column, Dec. 13), John Hastrup critiques the response to a recent hate-motivated incident of vandalism at Columbia. He then applies this criticism to Harvard’s previous outcry against a “minor altercation” that left a gay student hospitalized last spring. Hastrup raises an important point: people should think twice before inappropriately labeling expressions or actions as hate speech or hate crimes. However, to label these campus responses as “misplaced outrage” to incidents that are supposedly isolated from discrimination on campus trivializes the experiences of victims and their communities. Furthermore, Hastrup’s suggestion that minorities would be better off silencing their disapproval of hateful incidents is a disempowering proposal for minority groups to accept.

Even at liberal universities, incidents of hate are not “small, isolated occurrences.” They happen more frequently than people assume, and, as Hastrup concedes, their effects extend beyond individual victims. All minority students, and especially queer students, were sent a frightening message last spring when a fellow student was beaten near a queer dance party on Harvard’s campus. Any one of the hundreds of queer and non-queer students who attended the dance could have been the victim. It is simply unfathomable how Hastrup can label this crime as an isolated occurrence that “was so unrelated to homophobia on campus.” Any hate crime on campus is absolutely relevant to the overt and subtle forms of campus discrimination that affect minority students.

Hastrup’s overall suggestion is that “it is more effective to turn one’s back to the few remaining pockets of intolerance and let them wither away.” This idea is based on the erroneous assumption that discrimination against minorities is no longer commonplace. More dangerously, it advocates that, in response to actions that aim to silence and stigmatize, minority communities should be submissively silent in the face of these incidents. If Hastrup believes that hate crimes hurt entire communities, then these communities should not be criticized for coming together to console their members and to raise public awareness that violence and harassment are not just in the past.

Hastrup’s accusation that the solidarity among Harvard minority groups and allies is only a publicity tactic, and not a genuine initiative to denounce hate crimes at Harvard, is unfounded and unfair. It is important that students, and most importantly minorities, have the ability to publicly send the message that every student has a right to be free from violence and harassment. It is also important that the University endorse this message for it to uphold its academic mission. To claim that hateful incidents on campus have no relation to the discrimination belittles the experiences of hate crime victims and their communities.

In many ways liberal institutions have come a long way. However, it should not take, say, the Ku Klux Klan to rise to prominence once again on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in order for there to be a public acknowledgement that subtle and explicit racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination are widespread, and sometimes violent, realities for minorities at liberal universities.



JORDAN B. WOODS ’06

December 14, 2005