New 'Hate Speech' Rules Prompt Brown Expulsion

The recent expulsion of a Brown University student charged with making racist and homophobic comments is believed to be the first major application of "hate-speech" rules which have recently been adopted by a number of universities, including Harvard.

The student, Douglas Hann, admits he made the remarks outside a first-year dormitory last October. According to reports in the The Brown Daily Herald, a witness said he shouted "Fuck niggers" into the air, prompting a resident of the dormitory to ask him to "keep it down."

Hann then shouted "you fucking faggot" to the first-year student, the witness said. Hann then noticed an Israeli Flag in the window, and said "you're not a faggot, you're a fucking Jew," the student told the Herald.

The first-year student pressed charges against Hann, who was brought before Brown's disciplinary council. The committee expelled Hann under "hate speech" guidelines which were first introduced two years ago by Brown President Vartan Gregorian shortly after his arrival at the school.

In a written statement, Gregorian said the measures are aimed at curbing "inappropriate, abusive, threatening or demeaning actions," not restricting free speech.

"[The code] does not prohibit speech. It prohibits actions, including behavior which shows 'flagrant disrespect for the well-being of others or is unreasonably disruptive of the University community,'" the statement reads, citing Brown's code of student behavior.

And according to Harvard's Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, Gregorian's distinction may also apply at Harvard.

"There could be circumstances where speech becomes action and becomes harassment directed at a specific person," Jewett says.

"The process that they went through [at Brown] is one that might happen here," he says, referring to Harvard's free speech guidelines authored by Ford Professor of International Security Joseph S. Nye Jr. and adopted last spring by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

"There are obligations of civility and respect for others that underlie rational discourse. Racial, sexual and intense personal harassment not only show grave disrespect for the dignity of others, but also prevent rational discourse," reads an introduction to the guidelines.

"There is a point where speech crosses that line," Jewett said. "It sounds to me that the speech [in Hann's case] went over the line of what is protected."

Nye said yesterday that he wasn't sufficiently familiar with the Brown case to comment.

The rules at Harvard and Brown are two examples of such codes, which have been adopted at a number of schools in the U.S., including Stanford, Tufts, the University of California school system, and the Universities of Wisconsin and Michigan.

Such codes have been criticized for limiting free speech. In 1989 a federal court called Michigan's prohibition of harassment unconstitutionally vague.

The case which led to his explusion was the second such charge against Hann, who was found guilty of making a racial epithet at a Black student in a campus bar in 1989.

Hann played varsity football for Brown and was a member of the fraternity Delta Tau Delta. He does not deny making the remarks although he claims he was treated unfairly by the disciplinary council.

Hann has not ruled out taking Brown to court for violating rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Though some Brown students question the severity of the punishment, most think it was the right decision, says Mary Ann Campo, executive editor of the Herald.