At Utah's Weber State University, there has not been a single hate crime recorded in recent years. But you are wrong if you think that means Weber State is a welcoming, tolerant, and safe place to be. Officials at Weber State are indeed so eager to disabuse the campus community of that notion that it has instituted a new category of hate: hate bias.

Hate bias is defined by Keith Wilder of the campus diversity center as the mere expression of unorthodox opinion: "If someone has a bias and they speak it out, or they say it, or they announce that this is the way they feel about something, and people just kind of walk by without focusing in on it, it's a little bit like a cancer left alone. It grows and it has an effect." Wilder's idea is that hate bias leads to hate crimes, and as such it must be combatted before it spreads. His notion also appears to be that bias is itself hateful--that holding or expressing strong, unorthodox opinions on controversial questions having to do with race, gender, or sexuality in and of itself is a hateful, harmful act.

Creepy as the reasoning is, it works well for Wilder because it gives him something to do. There may be no hate crime on his campus, but there are plenty of what he likes to call "bias incidents." To combat hate bias, and the hate crimes that are bound to arise from them, Wilder has signed Weber State up to participate in the nationwide Stop the Hate program. Stop the Hate tracks hate crimes and hate bias on campus, recording as much information as possible on who says and does things that are deemed to be biased. Wilder is clear that hate biases are not illegal--but he is also clear that this is why those who commit hate bias must be watched. "It's those very incidents that have to be recorded and mentioned so at least we have an idea of what the bias is like on campus."

Does instituting the ideologically loaded, surveillance-oriented Stop the Hate program count as a bias incident? Of course not.

UPDATE: John Rosenberg uncovers a hate bias incident at the University of Virginia.

If Erin did not keep digging this stuff up I honestly might not believe it if someone told me about it -- some of it is just that absurd. Like this. After seeing the way they are abused, I came to the conclusion a while ago that hate crime laws are one of the most misguided legal initiatives in recent history. To use an expression popular when I was a kid, they often appear to be making a federal case out of name-calling. And it is spreading: In Europe, when a black is taunted from the stands during a soccer match, they call it "racism", and a hand-wringing session about what can be done about it ensues. Well, I asked my mother, and she told me to tell them to do the same thing she told me when I was a kid: Just ignore them.

We see here an ominous symbiotic relationship between a college administration and a political advocacy group, whereby official university policy provides the framework for public scapegoating with each gaining momentum from the other. But Erin, I've noticed you in the past praising websites like NoIndoctrination.org and Campus-Watch.org, watchdog outfits that are similarly "ideologically loaded" and "surveillance-oriented." Naturally all manner of variables affect the acceptability calculation in such matters, but I personally don't view any of this campus monitoring as a positive step forward. Surely we're only a small step away from wiretapping professors and rigging closed circuit TV cameras on every lamp-post?

-Mel

Next up? Thought crimes.

Weber State, Weber State, great great great!

And to think I once assumed that Weber State was a third-rate university whose only redeeming purpose was to provide marginally literate, but talented basketball players some minor league semi-pro experience. Well count me as enlightened. If it can attract just a few more Wilders, WSU will be Ivy League bound.

Mel: There's a bit of a difference between a professor requiring that students mirror his side of a controversy if they want good grades, and a student offering his opinion to his peers. I don't think the professor has to be overt about pushing his view in order to be considered problematic, either. I think he should be very sensitive about not abusing the authority he has in the classroom, to the point of keeping his views to himself in the classroom, if there is any doubt. Outside the classroom, of course, is a different story.

And yes, thought crimes are next.

Erin, when you write your entries for tomorrow, April 1, you need to put disclaimers next to the entries really meant as April Fool's Day jokes. I had to make sure today was March 31 when I read this one!

I am not surprised by this at all. I recently graduated from college and experienced this type of thinking often while on campus. I was once told that anyone with such a "closed mind" could not be successful in my career field. I asked whether or not a person with an open mind could be open-minded enough to accept my closed mind. My inquisitioner stomped off in a huff.