The “Hate Wall” Project to Eradicate and Dismantle Discrimination in Higher Education: Lessons learned from the Well-Intended Initiative Gone Awry!

Deeply rooted prejudices and hatred of others based on people’s ethnic backgrounds, disabilities, or religious affiliations are realities of every society. To allow students, faculty, and staff on campus to de-stress by metaphorically destroying experienced hate, the Diversity Student Council of Nova Southeastern University built a “Hate Wall” so everyone can write negative biases they have heard to then dismantle it physically and symbolically. During the day, people wrote comments on the wall, and some were antisemitic regarding the Jewish community. Within a few hours, it turned into a publicity failure while deeply stressing many. This case study discusses what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening in the future. A project that was meant to create a more inclusive campus resulted in much negative publicity and stress among some students, faculty, staff, parents, and academic administrators. In this case, we review the “Hate Wall” purpose, and how the project went awry. Suggestions, recommendations, and implications for the creation of inclusionary decision-making and diverse teams are presented. Discussion questions are provided to reflect on what could be done better in future projects.