The recent spate of incidents on college campuses involving the verbal expression of racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic hatred has reignited a long-running debate in the history of free speech. Like flag burning, obscenity, and defamation of character, the derogation of people on the basis of their race, religion, or ethnicity -- known to the legal community as "group libel" -- has often been singled out as a candidate for exclusion from the protections of the First Amendment. Those who have urged curbs on group libel point out that the United States stands alone among the democracies of the world in tolerating such speech.