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Muslim Students Reeling From Shocking News of NYPD's Spying
First came the shock. Then the deep retrospective anxiety.
"I've spent the last four days rethinking every single interaction I've had here. Everything I've said in Middle East Studies class ... in the cafeteria," said a student at Columbia University who asked he not be named. "I don't even know if you might be the police," the same student told me, as I scribbled his words in my notepad. Everything is now tinged with a layer of doubt.
The feeling of paranoia about being watched swelled up for Muslim students all over the northeastern United States last weekend when they found out that indeed they had been monitored, regularly and with troublingly free license, by the New York Police Department. The Associated Press reported on Saturday that the NYPD had monitored the Internet exchanges and postings of Muslim students on at least 16 colleges and in a number of cases the police sent undercover agents to actively spy on Muslim student associations, known as MSAs.
The revelation was just the latest in a rapidly accumulating body of information on the NYPD's extensive program to map and...
