Students Back Harsher Sanctions for Hate Speech Targeting Minority Groups Over White People: Study

College students believe that hate speech targeting minorities should be more harshly punished than when it targets white individuals, a recently published study found.

A national survey of 3,065 college students used hypothetical statements from either professors or students, varying the identity of the disparaged group from white, black, Jewish, Muslim, or transgender.

The severity of the speech was also toggled between “objectionable” to “explicitly hateful” as students were asked to rate the statements’ impact and how administrators should respond.

“[I]dentical statements directed at minority groups elicit stronger punitive responses than those targeting white individuals,” according to the study’s abstract.

The scholars from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford also found that students were significantly more supportive of disciplining or firing a professor for offensive speech directed at minority or marginalized groups than at white individuals.

Specifically, students were 33 percent more likely to favor suspension or termination if the target was black, and 23 percent more likely if the target was Jewish, Muslim, or transgender, compared to when the same statement was directed at a white person.

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Students preferred harsher punishment for offensive comments made against black people, even though they don’t actually believe those comments cause any more harm than if they were said about white people, the scholars found.

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