Communication guidelines: Hate speech edition

As I followed anti-Semitic hate crimes that shattered the snowy peacefulness of campus in the days before Chanukah, I was fairly certain the perpetrator could not have been a member of the IU community.

Much less did I imagine the criminal to be someone with whom I had ever
communicated.

Those thoughts changed when I heard that IU police had issued a warrant for Mark Zacharias, scholarships coordinator for the Hutton Honors College. The police allege that Zacharias broke the Jewish Studies Program’s display case in Goodbody Hall.
It is not known whether he will be charged in connection with other cases, but he has additionally been accused of stealing $300 from an employee of the Ellettsville Dollar General.

When the name sounded familiar, a quick search of my e-mail inbox identified a number of messages from Zacharias. I instantly remembered one from September 1, 2010.

Unlike typical messages from the Honors College and campus administrators, this one was hostile and, quite frankly, rude.

The subject line benignly announced, “Hutton Honors College Communications Guidelines.”

But then, in an all-bold, all-caps font the message disintegrated into a hostile rant warning that any student who removed his or her e-mail from the HHC list serve would be immediately thrown out of the Honors College.

The September 2010 message actually was an improvement over the same message from Zacharias in September 2009, when the same passages were even more eye-popping in their italicized, bold, red and all-capitalized font.

Ironically, it seems Zacharias himself is in need of some communication guidelines.
As a community, our adherence to two simple guidelines would go a long way in cultivating a more peaceful and tolerant campus climate.

Guideline number one — rethink hateful attitudes.

Hate crimes start with words.

Before someone could launch a limestone brick through an apartment above Chabad house or urinate on sacred Hebrew texts in the stacks of the Herman B Wells Library, hateful words “rationalized” that violent course of action.

Zacharias, it was revealed after his arrest, had a history of publishing letters in the Indiana Daily Student that reveal a tendency to believe the worst about religious minorities. Notably, in 2005 he suggested in a letter that the Muslim community had perhaps attempted to set fire to its own mosque.

Hate crimes are serious, and people must confront them as such rather than quickly blame victims.

Neither words that marginalize communities nor words that, however obliquely, suggest violence against opponents are acceptable in civil discourse — a lesson painfully hammered home this weekend in the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Though the shooter’s motives are not yet clear, Gifford’s district had been depicted under the crosshairs of a gun scope on Sarah Palin’s map of incumbent Democrats to “target.”

Lethal violence is always an unacceptable metaphor to use when talking about political opponents.

Guideline number two — respond to others’ hateful attitudes.

Students cannot abdicate the responsibility to administrators.

Hateful rants do an immense disservice to the free and civil exchange of ideas that is the bedrock of campus culture. When we hear them, we must confront them for the physical protection of whatever group is targeted and, just as importantly, for our collective integrity.

We are not voiceless bystanders, and when hate speaks, we all have a
responsibility to address it.

E-mail: wallacen@indiana.edu