The larger fight is ours

Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have joined together to do a decent and good thing. Something important and incredibly positive can come of it if they proceed with rigorous intellectual honesty and a lack of sentiment, easy optimism or self-congratulation.

And if their efforts are part of something much larger.

The two universities have established the Collaboratory Against Hate — Research and Action Center, which will study and research hate ideology, but also “develop effective tools that inhibit hate’s creation, growth and destructive consequences” — a tall order indeed.

The center will bring together scholars from various disciplines — from computer science to psychiatry to law — to seek to better understand and combat bias based on “race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation and other prejudices.”

It will be led by scholars Kathleen Blee of Pitt and Lorrie Cranor of CMU. Professor Blee is a sociologist who has been studying white supremacy and hate groups for 30 years. She notes how profoundly social media has changed the nature of the beast. Professor Cranor’s field is computer science and her specialization is security and privacy technology.

The two are uniquely qualified to lead an effort to understand what we might call organized internet hate, especially around the various permutations of white supremacy.

What are the roots of, and what is the food for, this kind of hate?

We need a lot more scholarship to understand how this cancer grows, how true believers are recruited, and how a process that can only be called a form of brainwashing actually works.

But, of course, this is only one kind of hate — one narrow sliver of something deeply embedded in human society and the human psyche.

Some will argue that the center’s mandate should be expanded. But it is already exhaustive.

Instead, the rest of us should expand the mission and take up the cause.

For combating hate is a different task than understanding it. The center’s launch document says “the center aims to develop effective interventions to inhibit every stage in the creation and growth of extremist hate, as well as interventions to minimize its impacts.” That is a much broader task. One that cannot be performed by or in the academy alone.

Defeating hate is not primarily a scholarly task. It is a moral task, a societal task and a democratic task.

It is also an age-old task, a cross that must be taken up again and again.

And whereas Pitt and CMU are wise to keep their focus narrow, political and business and religious leaders in our communities and nationally must commit to and build the broadest possible response to hate and its smaller cousins — demagoguery, disdain and incivility. And, yes, this must include not only a response to white supremacy but also to the cancel culture and the war on free thought.

So how do we do it, how do we combat hate? Some thoughts:

First, yes, we have to try to better understand it. We need study and data — from places like the new center.

Second, hate dies where and when people have knowledge of each other. Small discussion groups of people of disparate backgrounds, of class and race, like Dialogue to Change, help people with little previous exposure to each other to learn about each other and come to like and respect each other.

Third, economic prosperity makes pluralism possible. In hard economic times, it is easier for people to scapegoat each other or be pitted against each other.

Fourth, religion, all true religion, creates bonds across race, class and social space. All religions, when rightly interpreted and sincere, do this. Religion creates ties that bind, and all major religions and practices teach peace, brotherhood and tolerance.

Fifth, common effort — voluntary associations; civic groups, like Rotary; and patriotic service, like the Marines, the Army, the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Peace Corps — creates bands of brothers and sisters. Very quickly — in common cause, dedication and peril — bigotry and prejudice fall away.

We need all five — knowledge, dialogue, jobs and wealth creation, faith and common purpose — to conquer hatred. The fight against hate cannot be consigned to the academics or the clerics or the crusaders and activists of our time. It requires a broad social movement that enlists thousands, and touches millions. This is not Pitt’s and CMU’s job — it is ours.