News
Stanford Creates Intolerance Protocol
by David Regele
Staff Writer

Nearly seven years after the speech code was ruled unconstitutional, the University has issued a new stance on hate crime and hate speech. The Office of the President released the statement, entitled "An Acts of Intolerance Protocol for Faculty, Staff, and Students," on October 18.

An act of intolerance as defined in the protocol is "conduct that adversely and unfairly targets an individual or group on the basis of sex, race, color, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and/or national/ethnic origin." The protocol details the procedures and support for any member of the Stanford community who is either the victim or a witness of an act of intolerance.

The new protocol makes specific reference to acts of intolerance in the form of graffiti and e-mail. Last March racist graffiti directed against Asians, Arabs, and African Americans was discovered in the History Corner and in the East Asian Studies Building.

Since the events of September 11, religious groups on campus, including the Islamic Society of Stanford University (ISSU) and the Muslim Student Awareness Network, have received hateful emails.

"The Muslim community has been grateful to the University administration for taking such a proactive approach in dealing with the recent hate incidents," said ISSU president Omar Latif. He added that the protocol "provides a solid framework to address such acts."

However, the new protocol does not address the consequences for those found guilty of committing acts of intolerance.

"As I read the new Protocol," said Law Professor Thomas C. Grey, "it seems to have been carefully worded so as not to give any independent disciplinary significance to Ôacts of intolerance' as defined. So I don't see how it could run into any legal problems of the sort that arose with the prior Discriminatory Harassment Interpretation."

In February of 1995, the Santa Clara County Superior Court ruled Stanford's five-year-old speech code, an interpretation of the Fundamental Standard proposed by Mr. Grey, to be in violation of California law. The Grey interpretation attempted to define where legitimate speech ends and harassment begins, stating that speech constitutes harassment if it "makes use of Ôfighting' words or non-verbal symbols." Words were deemed "fighting" words if they, "by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite to an immediate breach of peace."

The Court described the Grey Interpretation as "overbroad," and said it prohibits speech that does not qualify as "fighting words." Thus, the speech code was found to conflict with First Amendment rights.

While the new Protocol on intolerance refrains from explicitly defining hate speech, a recent advertisement printed in The Daily, entitled "End States Who Sponsor Terrorism" by Leonard Peikoff, has already put the Protocol to the test when it comes to hate speech. In his article, Mr. Peikoff, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, states, "Many nations work to fill our body bags. But Iran, according to a State Department report of 1999, is Ôthe most active state sponsor of terrorism'. . . .."

He goes on to say, "What Germany was to Nazism in the 1940s, Iran is to terrorism today." He advocates doing "the equivalent of de-Nazifying the country, by expelling every official and bringing down every branch of its government."

This advertisement was unsettling for some. At UC-Berkeley about 1,000 copies of the student paper The Daily Cal, which ran the article in late October, were stolen and replaced with protest fliers, citing the ad as "irrational and inflammatory."

While the ad did not elicit as severe reactions at Stanford, numerous letters were written to The Daily and the Stanford Administration. Dara Ghahremani wrote to The Daily that "aside from disturbing members of the Stanford community in general, this article has particularly caused great distress and concern among the Stanford Iranian and Iranian-American community, as it is very inflammatory and makes several offensive references about Iran, short of suggesting genocide."

Tommy Lee Woon, Assistant Dean of Students, has taken heed of these concerns, stating that the Dean of Students Office is treating the article not as an act of intolerance, but as a "threat to community." Mr. Woon wrote in response to these letters, "the Dean of Students' Office wants to know about these incidents before community wedges and splinters turn into serious ruptures."

He stresses that the new Protocol is not being used to stifle legally protected forms of expression. "Recording such incidents in our protocol log as the letter from Dara Ghahremani stated," said Mr. Woon, "communicating to affected parties that we care, telling them they are not alone, protecting adversaries from backlash and urging other community members to support each other does not mean we in the Dean of Students Office are using the protocol to discourage free speech. The protocol enables us to move through community discord in a productive way and to raise awareness of the constructive ways we can address them to remain whole as a community."

Page last modified on Thursday, 02-Mar-2006 00:12:41 MST.