US Universities Face Surge in Racial Incidents 'Following Trump's Election'

Universities in the United States are suffering from a surge in far-right groups' activity and racially motivated hate crimes following the election of Donald Trump as US President in November 2016, Outreach Director for the US Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Lecia Brooks told Sputnik on Thursday.

LONDON (Sputnik) — The SPLC, which documents the activity of far-right groups, recorded almost 2,000 incidents of racial bias between November 2016 and April of this year, with some 330 of them taking place on university campuses.

"Like what happened in the UK after Brexit, in the US in general we witnessed a surge in racist rhetoric following the election of Trump. This gradually started to ease off as time went on, but when it comes to university campuses the activity hasn't faded out much at all. Far-right activism and race hate are still very much evident, something that's actively encouraged by the current political atmosphere," Brooks said.

The so-called "Trump-effect" was first detected by the SPLC more than a year ago when its Teaching Tolerance project surveyed 2,000 teachers in its network, according to SPLC President Richard Cohen. He stressed that a large majority of educators reported that the US president's campaign rhetoric was inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classrooms.

The number of designated "hate groups" in the United States is thought to have doubled since 1999, with the total figure increasing from 892 to 917 between 2015 and 2016. The number of anti-Muslim organizations has reportedly increased by 197 percent over the same period, rising from some 34 to 101.