This course introduces students to the field of hate crime studies and to many of the most pressing public debates about hate crime and responses to it. Hate crime has grown in importance to both academics and policy makers with the recent rise in hate crime and hate group activity in the last number of years. This course seeks to challenge, complicate and broaden understandings of hate crime by using hate crime as a site for thinking about larger questions concerning criminal justice, tolerance, individual rights and freedoms, and the nature of multicultural societies.