One autumn morning in Buffalo, N.Y., a college student named Adeela Khan logged into her email and found a message announcing an upcoming Islamic conference in Toronto, the Associated Press reports. Khan clicked “forward,” sent it to a group of fellow Muslims at the University at Buffalo, and promptly forgot about it. But that simple act on Nov. 9, 2006, was enough to arouse the suspicion of an intelligence analyst at the New York Police Department, 300 miles away, who combed through her post and put her name in an official report. Marked “SECRET” in large red letters, the document went all the way to Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s office. The report, along with other documents obtained by The Associated Press, reveals how the NYPD’s intelligence division focused far beyond New York City as part of a surveillance program targeting Muslims…
…Read MorePodcast Series: Innovations in Education
Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Brooklyn College faculty condemn NYC police spying on Muslim student groups
Brooklyn College faculty passed a resolution condemning the New York Police Department’s infiltration of Muslim student groups, complaining that it threatens intellectual freedom and the civil rights of both pupils and teachers, the college said Monday, according to the Associated Press. The college’s Faculty Council voted unanimously to condemn the practice, part of a broad intelligence-gathering operation that the NYPD has built in the last decade with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency…
…Read MoreElmhurst College’s sexual orientation application question first in the nation
Elmhurst College, a private liberal arts school located in the western suburbs of Chicago, this week released a new undergraduate application [PDF] for its 2012-2013 academic year including a reportedly historic question: “Would you consider yourself to be a member of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community?” reports the Huffington Post. The question is the first of its kind according to Campus Pride, a national advocacy group working to foster more LGBT-inclusive college settings, whose executive director Shane Windmeyer described the move as “a distinct and unique paradigm shift in higher education” in a statement Tuesday…
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