Hate Crimes on Campuses Are Rising, New FBI Data Show

Updated (11/16/2018, 3:16 p.m.) with comment from the Anti-Defamation League.

The killing of Richard Collins III stands out among the hate crimes documented in statistics released this week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Collins, a black Army lieutenant, was fatally stabbed by another college student just three days before he was set to graduate from Maryland’s Bowie State University in May 2017. His death was one of 15 hate-motivated killings that occurred in the United States last year and were reported to the FBI by the nation’s law-enforcement agencies.

Especially poignant for higher education was the location of Collins’s killing, on the campus of the University of Maryland at College Park. His was most likely the first hate-motivated killing on a college campus to be reported to the federal government by a higher-education institution since at least 2006.

The slaying of Collins also represents the continuation of a trend for campus hate crimes, first observed in 2016, when such crimes across all colleges increased by 25 percent compared with the year before, according to data collected from thousands of institutions by the U.S. Department of Education.

Nearly 280 hate crimes were reported in 2017 to the FBI by select campus police departments, up from 257 in 2016 and 194 in 2015. The FBI collects hate-crime data from a much smaller sample of colleges than does the Education Department. The largest year-to-year increases in hate crimes reported to the FBI, in terms of motivating bias, occurred in crimes against multiracial victims, African-Americans, and Jews.

The Anti-Defamation League called the increase in anti-Semitic and other types of hate incidents on college campuses “deeply troubling,” in a statement to The Chronicle.

“When anti-Semitic rhetoric or dog whistling is allowed in our public square and proliferates on social media without condemnation, especially from our leaders, it gives encouragement to impressionable young people. It is incumbent on all school leaders to call out hate whenever it arises,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the league’s chief executive and national director.

Nationally, hate crimes in 2017 rose by 17 percent compared with the year before, according to the FBI.

While fewer campus police departments and security services report hate-crimes data to the FBI compared with the thousands of public and private institutions that are required to disclose such incidents to the U.S. Department of Education under the Clery Act, the bureau’s report is an early indicator of campus-climate issues that many large universities and colleges are facing.

Nearly 60 percent of campus hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2017 involved vandalism and destruction of property. An additional 27.6 percent of incidents were intimidating in nature. And 31 assaults that were reported by campus police departments were rooted in hateful bias, according to the FBI data.

Colleges, meanwhile, continue to report hate-motivated crimes. On Tuesday, for example, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst reported to the campus community that a student’s door had been defaced with homophobic and transphobic slurs. A swastika was also drawn on the student’s door.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism found that incidents of white-supremacist propaganda had increased at America’s colleges in the 2017-18 academic year by 77 percent from the year before.

Dan Bauman is a reporter who investigates and writes about all things data in higher education. Tweet him at @danbauman77 or email him at dan.bauman@chronicle.com.

Updated (11/16/2018, 3:20 p.m.) with a statement from the Anti-Defamation League.