The recent murders of three local college students -- N.C. Central's Latrese Curtis, Duke's Abhijit Mahato, and UNC's Eve Carson -- have university communities looking outward for explanations and, given that a Durham teen has been charged with both the Mahato and Carson murders, possible connections.

Yet my experiences indicate it's time for universities to look inward, at faculty members who endorse or promulgate hateful ideologies that link the murders of these students, of Hispanic and Middle-Eastern immigrants, and of blacks, victims of most local murders.

I'm not suggesting that local university teachers had any influence on the killers of their students. But it is unseemly to have, in the midst of universities in mourning, faculty members who express or promote blatant hostility toward the groups into which the victims may have been categorized by their killers.

Because all the suspects in the student murders are African-American, scrutiny of ideologies unique to black murderers is warranted. Although the influence of hateful ideologies on white killers is acknowledged (e.g., Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh acted out a scene from "The Turner Diaries," a blueprint for a race war), failing to expose the ideologies of black murderers is no favor to African-Americans, the most frequent victims of believers.

Prominent among such creeds is that of the Nation of Gods and Earths (a.k.a. the Five Percent Nation of Islam), whose most popular Web site was hosted for more than 10 years by UNC's School of Information and Library Science. According to NGE doctrine, white persons such as Carson are "devils" and immigrants such as Mahato are "bloodsuckers."

Black women such as Curtis are considered inherently inferior, although they may prove themselves "worthy" of the title "earth" if they accept that their "place in the universe" is to "cook, clean, and bear the seed of their god," a designation reserved for five percent of black men. Other blacks are considered "deaf, dumb, and blind" and thus incapable of learning the "sacred knowledge" comprehensible to "gods" alone. This Web site included veiled threats to those despised by the NGE.

Assuming webmaster Paul Jones was unaware of the content of the site, which violated UNC policies, I e-mailed him in 2003. His reply included, "While the 5% are a bit odd and have a black nationalist stance, we did not consider them to be a 'hate group.' In fact, during my years of dealing with Allah [who maintained the site], I have found him to be pleasant and peaceful. For a time I was even on their mailing list which did have some odd postings and discussions (like a kind of Freemasonry or Mormonism really)." Jones continued to host the site, while "Allah" kept telling readers that whites like Jones were descended from germs grafted onto pigs and skunks.

The NGE message is also promulgated in rap music, with the endorsement of Duke's Mark Anthony Neal, a self-described "hip-hop intellectual." In an homage to "Rakim Allah, the Poet Laureate of the Hip-Hop Nation," Neal lamented that his "muse" had to operate "in a world not yet given to accepting the poetic genius and complexity of the 'rapper-God'."

After I publicly criticized Neal for his racial epithet-laden vocabulary ("I have a lot of athletes in my classes," he explained at a 2005 conference), he inexplicably began e-mailing his latest blog posts to me, which I blocked after receiving his approving review of a book by "one of the most viable black feminist scholars," who considered white women's fertility treatments a component of "contemporary eugenics movements." Recalling my joy at the births in my family -- some to white mothers -- I found the defamation of these miracles repugnant.

NCCU's Pat "9th Wonder" Douthit produced Little Brother's acclaimed hip-hop CD "The Minstrel Show." Because that title implies recognition of hip-hop's true nature, I considered Douthit's work a potential column topic until I heard its countless derogatory uses of the N-word, and concluding declaration of contempt for "crackers."

The remarks of Bob Carson, read at the funeral of his daughter Eve, exuded confidence in "our children's generation." While my generation bequeathed them a society in which college students who do everything right are vulnerable to murder, and their grief-stricken friends to prejudice masquerading as scholarship, perhaps our children's generation will rebel, relegating purveyors of hate to empty classrooms.

(John Schwade lives in Durham and works as a psychologist at a state prison.)