New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday jumped to the defence of the city's police department that is facing brickbats over reports it monitored Muslim students in colleges across the Northeast, even as Universities termed surveillance on the basis of religion as 'antithetical'.
Media reports over the weekend said the NYPD had monitored Muslim students at Yale and about 14 other colleges in the Northeast, eliciting major outrage.
Bloomberg said at a press conference here yesterday that survellance by the NYPD had helped to 'keep the country safe'.
His remarks came after Yale University President Richard Levin said in a statement to the Yale community that police surveillance on the basis of religion, nationality or 'peacefully expressed political opinions' is 'antithetical' to the values of Yale.
Bloomberg retorted that: "If going on websites and looking for information is not what Yale stands for, I don't know".
"It's the freedom of information... Of course we're gonna look at anything that's publicly available and in the public domain. We have an obligation to do so. And it is to protect the very things that let Yale survive," he said.
It had emerged over the weekend in media reports that the NYPD routinely monitored websites and blogs of Muslim student groups at colleges across the Northeast including Yale, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.
Information like names of students and professors involved in such student groups were recorded in reports prepared for New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
In a November 2006 NYPD document titled Weekly MSA Report, an NYPD officer had reported he 'did not find significant information' on the Yale Muslim Students Association's website. No student or teacher has however been charged with any crime.
"Mayor Bloomberg's remarks reveal a startling acceptance of religious profiling conducted by the NYPD," said Yale's Faisal Hamid, who is vice-president of the Muslim Students Association, in the University's student paper Yale Daily News.
"Profiling on the basis of faith is just as wrong and unacceptable as profiling on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or any other identity and we hope that Mayor Bloomberg comes to realise this."
Levin said the Yale Police Department did not participate in the NYPD's surveillance and was 'entirely unaware' of such activities media reports surfaced over the weekend.
"The Yale Muslim Students Association has been an important source of support for Yale students during a period when Muslims and Islam itself have too often been the target of thoughtless stereotyping, misplaced fear and bigotry," Levin said in a statement.
"Now, in the wake of these disturbing news reports, I want to assure the members of the Yale Muslim Students Association that they can count on the full support of Yale University."
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne has said it was 'prudent to get a better handle on' what was occurring at Muslim student associations around the Northeast.
According to media reports, NYPD monitoring of Muslim student associations took place as recently as 2009, when police set up a safe house in New Brunswick, New Jersey to follow the Muslim student group at Rutgers University.
The University of Pennsylvania said reports of surveillance activities by the NYPD have raised 'understandable concerns' on campus.
"While the University has been assured that no individual Penn students were subject to the surveillance or monitoring, the fact that students on our campus feel scrutinised simply because of their race or national origin is a sad and troubling statement on our times," it said in a statement.
In a statement Rutgers said had no knowledge that the New York Police Department (NYPD) was conducting surveillance near the university's campuses in Newark and New Brunswick.
"Once the university learned that these activities had occurred, Rutgers was informed that the NYPD's investigation was not within the university's legal jurisdiction. Given the concerns raised by members of the Rutgers community, the university would welcome a thorough investigation by the NYPD of its own activities," it said.
Previously, NYPD's monitoring and spying on Muslim community centres in New York had also caused outrage among people here.