Excerpt from ACLU Briefing Paper #16, "Hate Speech on Campus":

"Historically, defamation laws or codes have proven ineffective at
best and counter-productive at worst. For one thing, depending on how
they're intreted and enforced, they can actually work against the
interests of the people they were ostensibly created to protect. Why?
Because the ultimate power to decide what speech is offensive and to
who rests with the authorities -- the government or a college
administration -- the not with those who are the alleged victims of
hate speech.

In Great Britain, for example, a Racial Relations Act was adopted in
1965 to outlaw racist defmation. But throughout its existence, the Act
has largely been used to persecute activists of color, trade unionist
and anti-nuclear protesters, while the racists -- often white members
of Parlimanent -- have gone unpunished.

Simiarly, under the speech code in effect at the University of
Michigan for 18 months, white students in 20 cases charged black
students with offensive speech. One of the cases resulting in the
punishment of a black student for using the term "white trash" in a
conversation with a white student. [...]"