Following a recent spate of homophobic incidents in several Houses and a nationwide increase in reported hate crimes, students and some of the University's most prominent Faculty spoke on this issue during a panel discussion Wednesday night.

Nearly 300 students came to the event at Sanders Theatre, titled "Hate Crimes in America: A Search for Solutions." The discussion, sponsored by the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, was the first in a series of University-wide talks on hate crimes.

"No community is free from hate," said Serre-Yu Wong '01, who began the evening's discussion. "One of us may be the next victim. More frighteningly, one of us may be the next perpetrator."

Panelists talked about subjects ranging from the religious targets of certain hate crimes to the moral justifications some use when arguing that hate crimes deserve harsher punishments than other crimes.

Porter Professor of Philosophy Robert Nozick called crimes spurred by hate "terroristic acts."

"I don't have a solution," he said. "I wish I did."

He suggested that a hate-motivated murder should receive a more severe penalty than a random murder because such a crime could count as threatening members of a certain minority group.

Panelist Emily N. Tabak '00, a government concentrator whose thesis is on hate crimes, said such acts are worse than other crimes not because of the moral abhorrence of their motivations, but because of their moral effects on society.