NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Yale University and student groups are condemning the monitoring of Muslim college students across the Northeast by the New York Police Department, while Rutgers University and leaders of Muslim groups are calling for investigations.
The New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools far beyond the city limits, including the Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press reported Saturday.
Police talked with local authorities about professors 300 miles away in Buffalo and sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.
Detectives trawled Muslim student websites every day and, although professors and students had not been accused of any wrongdoing, their names were recorded in reports prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
A 2006 report explained that officers from the NYPD’s Cyber Intelligence unit visited the websites, blogs and forums of Muslim student associations as a “daily routine.” The universities included Yale; Columbia; the University of Pennsylvania; Syracuse; New York University; Clarkson University; Rutgers University; and the State University of New York campuses in Buffalo, Albany, Stony Brook and Potsdam, N.Y.; Queens College, Baruch College, Brooklyn College and La Guardia Community College.
An NYPD spokesman said police wanted to get a better handle on what was occurring at student associations. He cited 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the United States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations.
Police spokesman Paul Browne said police monitored student websites and collected publicly available information, but did so only between 2006 and 2007.
