President Clinton announced yesterday morning that he will take political action in response to hate crimes in the U.S.--where more than 8,000 such crimes were reported in 1997.

The President plans to fight against hate crimes through both an executive and legislative push. Two of his spokespeople later discussed the initiatives in a conference call with reporters yesterday.

Clinton is advocating a broader definition of hate crimes in a new bill that is now working its way through Congress. According to the president's Special Counsel for Civil Rights, Edward Correia, if more crimes are considered to be based on "hate," the criminals who commit them will face stricter sentences.

State governments are often not tough enough against criminals who have committed hate crimes, Correia said in the conference call.

"It carves out a special role for government to protect people from discrimination," Correia said. "We have a national problem that we have to do something about."

The current federal law on the subject, written in 1968, says that "hate crimes" must be motivated by prejudice based on race, color, religion or nationality and be committed against someone who is engaged in a federally protected act.

"Federally protected acts," in this definition, means acts which inherently identify the actor as a member of a minority group, such as marches and protests.

The new law would add gender, disability and sexual orientation to the definition and would broaden the legislation to include any crime motivated by hate, regardless of circumstance.

Hearings on the legislation, which currently has 30 co-sponsors in the Senate and 140 in the House, are scheduled for late April.

Clinton also outlined three initiatives to stop hate crimes before they happen by teaching children about hate and discrimination.

The president's plan would help educate the government about discrimination in schools and would teach young people about hate crimes' effect on society, Clinton said in a press release.

Annual reports on school safety produced by the Justice and Education Departments will now include information about hate crimes, Clinton said.

And, for the first time, the Department of Education will have to collect data about biases and hate crimes on college campuses.

Lastly, the President called for a "publicprivate partnership" program to educate middle school students about tolerance through television shows and classroom presentations.

Mary Smith, associate director for policy planning, said that targeting a middle school audience may catch the problem before it starts.

"These are children who are just approaching adolescence," said Mary Smith, associate director for policy planning, during the conference call.

Smith added that the education initiatives aim to reach children before they have set attitudes about discrimination.

Instead of teaching about specific biases, Smith said, the program will introduce children to universal ideas about differences.

"[It's] teaching a way of life," she said.