Why the U. of Maryland Is Hiring a ‘Hate-Bias Response Coordinator’

Carolyn Kaster/AP Images

Officials at the University of Maryland at College Park say their decision to hire a full-time “hate-bias response coordinator” reflects that a new normal has taken hold in higher education, one in which white supremacists and other hate groups are targeting campuses more than ever before.

Maryland announced the new position on Monday as part of a broader retooling of its procedures for responding to reports of bias on the campus. The coordinator will manage a new bias-response team as well as meet with students affected by hate incidents and help design training and education on diversity and inclusion issues.

The move comes six months after Richard Collins III, a black student at Bowie State University, was fatally stabbed by Sean Urbanski, a white Maryland student, while visiting friends on the College Park campus. Mr. Urbanski has since been charged with a hate crime and indicted by a grand jury. He was a member of an extreme-right Facebook group, Alt-Reich Nation.

Roger Worthington, Maryland’s chief diversity officer, said the university wants to fill the new post with someone who has “extensive professional expertise” in dealing with hate and bias in higher education and, potentially, some background in mental health.

“The need for a full-time hate-bias response coordinator is part of the University of Maryland’s effort to comprehensively address the issues in the context that we’re in at this moment in time,” he said in an interview.

Several student-affairs administrators said they had not heard of another institution that had hired a full-time staff person devoted solely to hate- and bias-response work.

Hate-bias incidents on campuses are nothing new, Mr. Worthington said, noting that he had to coordinate the response to a neo-Nazi march in 2007 at the University of Missouri at Columbia, when he was the chief diversity officer there. It’s also difficult to say for certain whether there has been a recent uptick in such incidents.

What feels different now, he said, is the intensity with which hate groups are trying to stir up trouble at Maryland and elsewhere.

“People are coming onto college campuses and postering or committing hate and bias incidents that are intended to provoke — to get college students or even employees on campuses to make mistakes that violate their civil rights in some way and draw attention to their cause and even potentially recruit new members,” he said. “This is something that we didn’t even fathom 10 years ago.”

Multiple hate-motivated incidents have rocked the university over the past year. Weeks before Mr. Collins was fatally stabbed, a noose was found hanging in the kitchen of a Maryland fraternity house. On at least three separate occasions since last year’s presidential election, white-supremacist posters have been placed around the campus. After Donald J. Trump was elected president, people with far-right, racist, and sexist views felt emboldened to speak freely.

Following Mr. Collins’s death, Wallace D. Loh, the university’s president, created a task force on bias and campus safety, and announced a collaboration with the Anti-Defamation League, among other things.

The new coordinator will work in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Per the revised procedures, reports of hate or bias can be filed with the campus police department or the Title IX office. Once a report is received, the diversity office will be notified. Then the coordinator will convene the bias-response team and offer support services to whoever has been affected by the incident, Mr. Worthington said.

If the person making the report is a student, the coordinator will reach out to him or her directly and “might spend some time working through a conversation with them about what happened and what their options are,” he said.

“If it’s a group or an entire community,” he continued, “there might be different ways of responding.”

A log of hate-bias incidents will be posted on a new website, and students, faculty members, and staff members will be able to opt in to a notification system that sends emails once a complaint has been received, Mr. Worthington said.

Bias-response teams at other institutions have been criticized for, according to some observers, infringing on the free-speech rights of students and others. Mr. Worthington said figuring out a balance between upholding free speech, supporting diversity and inclusion, and preventing hateful incidents is at the forefront of the minds of many college presidents and diversity officers.

“We’re all struggling to find the right path forward,” he said.

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.