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Academic Freedom and the NYPD

After news emerged in February that the NYPD has been monitoring Muslim student groups at more than a dozen universities in the New York area, academic leaders at the schools involved condemned the surveillance as a case of racial and religious stereotyping. Instead, they ought to be thanking the NYPD for doing its job, which is to prevent catastrophic terrorist attacks, thereby preserving the liberty that allows the academic enterprise to exist in the first place.

Criticism from academic leaders was as unanimous as it was unfounded. City College of New York said it did not “accept or condone” the investigation. A Columbia spokesman suggested it “could chill our essential values of academic freedom.” At Cornell, the dean of students complained that Muslim students felt “targeted.” Yale University President Richard C. Levin said, “Police surveillance based on religion, nationality, or peacefully expressed political opinions is antithetical to the values of Yale.”

Consider what the NYPD actually did. According to published reports, the lion’s share of surveillance consisted of monitoring student websites and message boards — all information that is accessible to the general public. No hacking, no secret wiretaps were involved. With a quick Google search and a couple of mouse clicks, anyone with an Internet connection could be conducting equally invasive “surveillance” of Muslim student groups, thereby “violating” their civil liberties, if academic leaders are to be believed.

The most aggressive activity appears to be a case in which an undercover officer accompanied a group of Muslim students on a whitewater rafting trip in 2008. Judging from academic leaders’ reactions, one would have thought it was a case of waterboarding, not water rafting. It’s hard to see how students suffered. Maybe next time the NYPD will take Muslim students rock climbing or hang-gliding, or some other fun-filled activity.

Faced with the difficult challenge of keeping people safe in the post-9/11 world, it’s the job of police to do everything within their power to prevent an attack. One can debate the usefulness of the NYPD’s intelligence-gathering strategies, but there is nothing illegal about them. Ultimately, we should judge the police on the basis of their effectiveness, not on their willingness to bow to the dictates of political correctness. New York has not suffered a major terrorist attack since 9/11 — a fact for which the NYPD no doubt deserves considerable credit.

We know at least one recently thwarted terrorist was active in a Muslim student organization. The failed “Underwear Bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was president of the student Islamic society at University College London.

Ignoring the role Islamic extremism plays in terrorist circles would be akin to sticking one’s head in the sand. So long as it is done legally, monitoring Muslim groups in search of the rare extremist is smart law enforcement. It has nothing to do with targeting law-abiding Muslims.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg had it right when he said, “Freedoms to do research, to teach, to give people a place where they can say what they want to say, is defended by law enforcement throughout this country that works very hard to make sure we are safe.”

None of us wants to live in an invasive police state. But a certain amount of scrutiny in the public sphere is a reality for all of us in the post-9/11 world, whether we are being screened at airports, or are posting on public Internet forums. Furthermore, the NYPD’s efforts are in the service of protecting all Americans, including Muslim Americans. For this very reason, the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy has issued a statement of support on behalf of the NYPD and its student monitoring programs.

Unlike their academic critics, law enforcement officials have to make life and death decisions every day. They don’t live in a fantasy world where PC-platitudes are enough to solve any problem.

These grumbling academics fail to recognize that the extraordinary deference they extend to America’s enemies is not something the extremists would extend to them. I suspect our nation’s liberal academic professionals would be some of the first to be persecuted under a radical Islamic regime.

Academic freedom is a byproduct of political freedom. Elite academics who make their living off the former should not be so quick to impugn those whose job it is to protect the latter.

This article originally appeared in the International Business Times and is reprinted here with permission. Follow Nathan on Twitter @nathanharden

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