The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has issued a new report stating that white supremacist activity has increased on college campuses by 77% over the past year.
According to the report, the ADL determined that there were 292 instances of white supremacist activity on universities in the 2017-18 academic year; there were 165 such instances in the prior academic year.
The white supremacist activity largely involved fliers on campus from various alt-right, neo-Nazi groups like Identity Evropa and National Socialist Legion (NSL) spreading white supremacist propaganda that includes “veiled white supremacist language to explicitly racist images and words, often includes a recruitment element, and frequently attacks minority groups including Jews, Blacks, Muslims, non-white immigrants and the LGBT community.”
Some recent examples of white supremacist activity on campus highlighted in the report included three attendees from a 2017 University of Florida speaking event for neo-Nazi Richard Spencer yelling “Heil Hitler!” as they drove by a bus stop; one of them proceeded to fire a gun in an ensuing altercation. Two of the attendees are now facing charges over the incident.
Another example included eight people posting white supremacist fliers on Texas State University’s campus; the people involved were not students and are facing trespassing charges.
“College campuses and their communities should be places for learning, growing and the future, not close-minded racism and hate-filled rhetoric from the past,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “We’re concerned to see that white supremacists are accelerating their efforts to target schools with propaganda in hopes of recruiting young people to support their bigoted worldview.”
Greenblatt added, “It’s always important for university administrators to respect and protect free speech, but it’s equally vital that they take the necessary steps to counter the hateful messages of these group. These steps can include educating faculty and students on the parameters of their First Amendment rights, and also improving training for campus officials charged with responding to bias incidents and hate crimes.”
Read the full report here.
