MANHATTAN — In the wake of an Associated Press report that the NYPD has monitored Muslim students at colleges around the city and in other states, Muslim student groups at NYU, Columbia and City College are speaking out against the surveillance and demanding more information.
The Islamic Center at New York University sent an "action alert" to members of its listserv Tuesday encouraging students, alumni, faculty and locals to email school administrators to ask the NYPD and Mayor Michael Bloomberg for more details about the reported surveillance.
"We would encourage you to reach out [to administrators] and share with them your feelings on this issue," the email from the Islamic Center read. "NYU has always been supportive of its Muslim community and we are confident that they will be at this time as well."
NYPD detectives tracked events planned at NYU and monitored the websites, blogs and forums of Muslim student groups at 16 universities in the city and state, including NYU, Columbia University and City College of New York, according to the AP.
"We did not know about or condone the surveillance of publicly accessible websites by the NYPD," Columbia President Bollinger said in a statement. "We are deeply concerned about any government activity that would chill the freedom of thought or intrude upon student privacy, both of which are so essential to our academic community."
The Columbia Muslim Students Association posted a note on its website alerting students to the reported surveillance, adding that the group is "deeply saddened and disappointed by the news of the NYPD's surveillance and monitoring of Muslim college students across many campuses, including our own."
The AP found that the NYPD even sent an undercover agent on an April 2008 whitewater rafting trip upstate involving members of City College's Muslim Student Association.
City College spokesman Ellis Simon questioned the need for an investigation into its students without evidence linking them to criminal activity.
"The City College of New York does not accept or condone any investigation of any student organization based on the political or religious content of its ideas, just as we would not accept or condone any student organization that does not abide by the law," Simon said in a statement.
An internal, November 2006 NYPD document marked "NYPD Secret," which the AP published, lists upcoming events of the Muslim Students Association and Islamic Center, including a mentorship program for recent converts to Islam and a lecture on science in the Koran.
Ahmad Raza, president of the undergraduate Muslim Students Association of NYU, which is under the umbrella of the Islamic Center, said he wants more information on how the school's Muslims have been monitored.
"We want to know what the extent of the surveillance was and how that data is being used," he said Wednesday.
Raza, a 22-year-old New Jersey native of Pakistani descent, said he empathizes with the need for monitoring Muslim groups when police have leads on criminal activity.
"If you talk with students here, no one has a problem with the NYPD looking at our websites and stuff," he said. "What would be inappropriate would be things like the undercover cop on the rafting trip. It's scary to think that some people in our organization would have the intention of spying on us."
Islamic Center executive director Imam Khalid Latif, who is also an NYPD chaplain, called the letter-writing campaign "student-led" and declined to comment further.
Nothing about the campaign appears on the Islamic Center's website.
University spokesman John Beckman said in a statement that NYU appreciates the NYPD's efforts to protect New Yorkers from terrorist attacks, but that surveillance of Muslim students may be inappropriate.
"We hope that the police department is employing anti-terrorism tactics other than looking at the public websites of student groups, which at a university naturally raises privacy concerns on behalf of its students," he said.
"NYU stands in fellowship with its Muslim students in expressing our community’s concerns over these activities."
