The emergence of hate in the ongoing, heated debate over an essay in The Tennessean calling Confederate soldiers traitors who deserved to be executed should have been expected.

Emotions are high. The source of the hate, however, was shocking.

The following e-mail - from every indication - was written by Vanderbilt professor Jonathan Farley, author of the essay, to Gary Waltrip, a certified public accountant in Hollister, Calif. But Farley would not confirm or deny authorship after repeatedly being asked this past week:

''It's amazing how disgusting you Confederates are, always ready to lie - and, if a lie will not work, attack physically. Slaves were murdered, raped, tortured, etc. You are exactly like the neo-Nazi scum who deny the Holocaust ever happened. I also like it when you say things that apply directly to you: YOU are exactly like a murderer-rapist who blames his victim. Indeed, your ancestors were LITERALLY murderers and rapists. Same goes for your comment about not being open to intellectual persuasion.

''You did get one thing right: I DO hate Confederates. I was willing to let their descendants off the hook, but, given the vomit you have spewed out (coming straight from your skull, no doubt), I hate you as well.

''Maybe hate breeds more hate. But we blacks have been loving you guys for 40 years or more, and you haven't stopped your terror, so clearly THAT doesn't work. (By the way, did you tell 'Hate only breeds more hate' to George Bush when he bombed Afghanistan?)

''Yes, that madman David Horowitz and the rest of the liars of the Right love to make it seem like the right-wing media and the right-wing universities are in fact controlled by Marxists. (I actually do not know a single Marxist who teaches here.) As your hero Hitler said, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

''We're not at war with the people outside the university. As I stated in my essay, how dare you presume to speak for the millions outside who want nothing to do with your murderous legacy. And the outside world - outside America -is even more in agreement with us. Fine, if you guys are only more resolved to defend your Confederate Memorial Hall. At least you have to defend it now, whereas you didn't before. Because we are winning.

''We too will form our own armies to expose and smash you. Very simply, we are right and you are wrong. Very simply, we represent good and you represent evil.''

It's not a matter of being angry at Farley, 32, for this e-mail. I feel sad for him. His words are a lesson on the power of hate and how it damages even those who are highly educated and employed at places of higher learning.

African Americans do face discrimination today. Slavery's legacy still wields economic and social impact. Using these factors to pass on hate, however, is unacceptable, particularly from a college.

Starting with a dorm

The man who received Farley's e-mail is not returning the hate.

'' ... he is just young and somewhat immature yet,'' wrote Gary Waltrip, who took Farley's e-mail and posted it on a Web site. The Washington Times also quoted from it last Tuesday in a story.

''Also, it would probably behoove him to learn some tact.''

All sides need to. There are people of Confederate heritage who go too far. Talk about the South rising again and breaking from the United States is threatening. Too many defenders of this heritage too quickly dismiss slavery's roots in the Civil War. It is terrorism for a few to threaten Farley. He has said mail to him has said things ranging from ''I hope traitors like you come to a sticky end'' to ''you represent everything my ancestors fought to eliminate.''

His supporters claim he's a victim of harassment aimed at silencing him. But the professor has made a point of interjecting himself into the controversy over Vanderbilt deciding to remove the word ''Confederate'' from a dorm endowed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. His first salvo was to liken the Confederate Memorial Hall to a Nazi Memorial Hall in an e-mail he sent to the news media. He was a congressional candidate for the Green Party in the Fifth District race. His essay followed. Then he sent out an e-mail to the media Nov. 27 citing a campaign by Confederate groups to get him fired.

Stirring up more anger

Waltrip's original e-mail to Farley about his essay, however, was meant to stir anger, not discussion:

''I read your essay in the Tennessean and must tell you it was one of the most hateful screeds I have ever read. You seem to be a man who is filled with hate. Your vituperation was filled with half-truths, myths and popular factoids that are not facts at all. If this was an example of your scholarship, your math students at Vandy had better get used to counting on their fingers so they can make change in their future careers at McDonald's.

''Slaves were valuable property; they were not tortured or murdered for fun and sport any more than a modern farmer would take a sledge hammer to his new John Deere. Slaves consumed 90% of what they produced and lived at a level higher than that of the toiling masses of Europe.

''Those facts were produced by a real study by professors more honest and informed than you are - Fogel & Engerman's book, Time on the Cross. They applied mathematics and statistics to the study of history, which should make the book interesting to a math professor - assuming he had an open mind. Alas, I fear the only thing open about you is your mouth.

''There was a lot of tyranny in the Civil War, but it was furnished by the North to the detriment of the South. The North is the section that made war, invaded other states and murdered its citizens, black and white.

''They most certainly didn't do it as a great moral exercise against slavery; they did it to protect the North's tax base and to prevent the South from becoming a free-trade zone that would imperil the Northern tariff. Today, the North lies about its true purpose of conquest and subjugation, claiming they were great emancipators of truth and light. It is you who are the purveyors of a new Holocaust Denial - you claim your evil is really good and that your Southern victims were actually villains. You are like a rapist-murderer who kills his victim for resisting, and then says, 'See what you made me do?'

''But I am not going to bother explaining fundamentals to a leftist ideologue like you. This is not about your lack of facts, background or understanding: You are a hater who seeks to justify his hate, and as such, you are not open to intellectual persuasion. If you were, I might actually take the time to educate you, but why waste my time on a hopeless chore? Just let me warn you that hate breeds more hate. Venting your spleen may have made you feel better for the moment, but it has only put steel in our resolve, that 'Confederate' will not be removed from Memorial Hall. Put very simply, we are right and you are wrong.

''Just let me inform you that the Marxist domination of the university, and that includes Vanderbilt, is going to cease. Political correctness, the almost total exclusion of conservative thought, Republican professors, rightist speakers and student groups is going to end. As David Horowitz so accurately said about Vanderbilt, it is a good example of how university professors see themselves, not as agents of education but as a hostile counterculture at war with the world outside the university. That's one war you are going to lose. Vanderbilt is going to be a real university again and not merely a four-year boot camp for radicals. Who knows, you might even have to start educating again.''

E-mail can be more a curse than a way to communicate. I received an e-mail from someone claiming to be president of the Black Student Alliance at Vanderbilt. She called me racist and ignorant. Her e-mail closed with: ''The right side won the battle in 1869, so get over it!!!!''

1869? The Civil War? I'll not identify the poor student. Her e-mail just shows what rage does when reason is needed on all sides.

Vandy's response

When I initially informed Vanderbilt Vice Chancellor Michael Schoenfeld of Farley's e-mail, he also hid behind the excuse that the professor neither confirmed or denied writing it. Even after reading the e-mail, Schoenfeld asked for my definition of hate speech.

I replied that it's like Farley's e-mail - when someone says they hate another group of people. What if a white professor expressed hatred in an e-mail of African-American people of a certain heritage? Editorials and columns would express outrage.

Does Vanderbilt have any interest in finding out if a professor expressed such hate? Schoenfeld replied, ''Any contact between a faculty member and University officials in a situation like this would be considered a personnel matter and ... something we would not discuss in public.''

He added: ''Professor Farley is speaking as an individual. ... Some of his comments are totally contrary to Vanderbilt's efforts to create a civil and respectful academic community and are rightly offensive to, and rejected by, most people. But the longstanding tenets of academic freedom ... give our faculty members the right to make public statements and the responsibility to defend them in the marketplace of ideas.''

Yes, he has the right. But he won't even admit to all his words. Schoenfeld is correct that his words should be part of the marketplace. A forum will be held at 6 p.m. tomorrow in the Reading Room of Lewis House on campus. Please attend with recognition that his essay is within his free speech rights and has some historical backing. And a lot of folks of Confederate heritage are very knowledgeable of their own history.

''Dr. Farley will be in attendance at the discussion ... although he has expressed reservations,'' writes organizer, Trisha Felderman. ''... He doesn't like expressing his views at 'conservative Vanderbilt' because he finds it 'morally repugnant to engage in the usual sort of dispassionate academic discourse when talking about how [his] ancestors were treated like animals.' Secondly, he finds 'Vanderbilt students - including the ones who claim to have extensively studied the Civil War - amazingly ignorant of history.' ''

Don't silence him

Efforts to silence Farley by demanding his firing are wrong.

Hate, however, crosses the line. But it should only be held up with a simple warning. Buyer beware: This professor hates. And Vanderbilt is too apathetic about it.

In this age of unprecedented diversity, do demands for fairness and tolerance by minorities also protect everyone else? Where is fairness when a university that took offense at the word ''Confederate'' on a dorm has a professor who expresses hatred for an entire group of people, and he won't even confirm or deny it?

Farley has an impressive record. Lana Rajkumar of the Caribbean Students Association at Vanderbilt, writes: ''Dr. Farley has taught mathematics here at Vanderbilt since 1996. He is a graduate of both Harvard and Oxford universities and is one of only four people in the U.S. to win a 2001-2002 Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to the United Kingdom. Last year, he was named a 'Leader of the Future' by Ebony magazine. ? Equally impressive is Dr. Farley's commitment to students beyond just the classroom. ... His lectures have included How to Get Straight A's in College, What You Need to Know to Get Your Ph.D. and The Story of the Black Panther Party. He has also advised campus groups.''

I do not relish writing this column. But hate and even efforts to elicit it must be confronted wherever they crop up. ?