In solidarity against surveillance

According to an Associated Press report released last Saturday (“NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast,” Feb. 18), the Columbia Muslim Students Association’s website was subject to monitoring by the New York Police Department. An October report, also from AP, revealed that the NYPD had been monitoring eight other colleges in the city. Saturday’s report uncovered further details regarding the NYPD’s monitoring activities with an expanded list of colleges, including Penn and Yale, and is the first to mention Columbia’s Muslim Students Association.

The report limits its mention of Columbia to stating that the NYPD had monitored CU MSA’s website. At other colleges, the NYPD has engaged in activities with other Muslim student associations that are far more alarming. In one example, an undercover officer was sent on a whitewater rafting trip with Muslim students from the City College of New York. In October, AP reported “that the NYPD had placed informants or undercover officers in the Muslim Student Associations at City College, Brooklyn College, Baruch College, Hunter College, City College of New York, Queens College, LaGuardia Community College, and St. John’s University.” This level of surveillance seems excessive and unjustified.

Moreover, this program’s invasion of privacy is disturbing, and its profiling is offensive. AP mentioned an NYPD report titled “Weekly MSA Report,” dated Nov. 22, 2006, by which time the NYPD’s Cyber Intelligence unit had made visiting Muslim student associations’ websites a “daily routine.” More than five years later, there has been no indication that this has stopped or that surveillance has not been expanded.

So far, the University’s response to the NYPD’s monitoring has been encouraging. While Yale’s administration declined to comment to the AP, and Penn’s did not immediately respond to the AP’s requests for comment, Columbia and City College’s representatives both condemned the NYPD’s monitoring. Columbia spokesman Robert Hornsby’s statement to the AP is a promising initial reaction.

“Like New York City itself, American universities are admired across the globe as places that welcome a diversity of people and viewpoints. So we would obviously be concerned about anything that could chill our essential values of academic freedom or intrude on student privacy,” Hornsby wrote.

Columbia should continue to pressure the NYPD to be more forthcoming about its surveillance of CU MSA and to react appropriately. While we understand that the NYPD has legitimate security concerns, its rationale connecting Muslim student associations to terrorism is weak. Columbia should ask more questions about NYPD surveillance on campus.

We stand in solidarity with CU MSA and the other Muslim student associations that were subject to NYPD surveillance. Furthermore, we urge other Columbia students to show support for CU MSA in light of this disturbing news.