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by Jayne Lyn Stahl
In a move that would put a huge smile
on J. Edgar Hoover's face, the top gun at the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, in Boston, reportedly paid a visit to Harvard, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of
Massachusetts to warn university officials to be "on the lookout for
foreign spies," or "terrorists" who might be after "sensitive"
research. These visits are, at the moment, confined to the state of
Massachusetts, yet, according to Special Agent in Charge, Warren
Bamford, this is the beginning of a national program. (AP)
Bamford insists that the attempt is not to censor
information, or hinder an atmosphere of academic openness, but merely
to raise "awareness." He contends that he's only suggesting that if
anyone is poking around suspiciously, or expressing "unnatural"
curiosity about a research project that university professors, and
scholars, should simply give him a call. But, at a time when reports on
global warming have been tampered with, and when military reports on
killing of civilians have had whole sections blacked out, one can
hardly expect this move to go unnoticed among civil liberties'
advocates.
That the head of a local office of the FBI should meet with
university officials to discuss creating an environment in which those
who are accustomed to pursuing unrestricted, and unsupervised,
scholarship must now look over their shoulder, is an egregious
extension of the USA Patriot Act which advises neighbors to report
suspicious behavior by other neighbors to local law enforcement.
And, while chilling, this program appears to be part of a
growing practice on the part of government to monitor, and surveil its
citizens electronic, and telephonic communications. Some might even
argue that academia should not be exempt from governmental
surveillance, but the medical research being done at Harvard may one
day save their lives. Unfortunately, too, this is not the first attempt
to compromise the concept of the university as a haven for expressing
divergent, and controversial thought.
Sometime, in the next several weeks, the Board of Regents
will decide whether or not to fire a tenured professor of ethnic
studies, Ward Churchill, who has taught at the University of Colorado
at Boulder for nearly 20 years for an essay he wrote, back in 2001,
comparing victims of the World Trade Center bombing, on 9/11, to Adolf
Eichmann. You'll recall that, over the past 6 years, Churchill's
speaking engagements at several universities were cancelled. Clearly,
whether one agrees with his thesis or not, the right to express one's
viewpoint, with impunity, in an academic context, was a given until the
current terror frenzy took hold. What we have here is not the aroma of
mendacity, but of McCarthyism.
What's more, Churchill is not the only educator to question
the authenticity of 9/11 to face expulsion from an American university.
Ideas themselves have become contraband material for this
administration. Last June, the State Department and the Department of
Homeland Security barred a professor from Athens, Professor John
Milios, from entering the U.S. upon his arrival at Kennedy Airport on
the basis of "irregularities" in his Visa. Many groups, including the
American Association of University Professors, expressed outrage.
Notably, Dr. Milios was en route to read from his paper, "How Class
Works," at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. when he was
detained at the New York airport.
This is not a solitary incident, but represents what AAUP
general secretary, Roger Bowen, calls "a troubling pattern" in which
foreign scholars are precluded from entering the U.S.Back in 2004, the
government refused to grant a Visa to a prominent Muslim scholar, Tariq
Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, when he was appointed to a tenured faculty
position at the University of Notre Dame. The AAUP joined the ACLU and
PEN American Center to challenge the provision of the Patriot Act which
was used to bar Ramadan from entering the United States. This process
by which Homeland Security intervenes in the routine travel of foreign
scholars is one that gets remarkably little notice from the press, or
Congress.
Whether it's asking neighbors to observe each other, and
report any "suspicious" behavior to law enforcement, or asking scholars
to be mindful of possible "foreign spies" in their classrooms, it's
part of the same pattern which speaks to an attempt to cultivate a
climate of self-censorship, and repression in which behavior is
modified such that one avoids the kind of inquiry needed to advance
higher learning, and higher order thinking, too. If a university
researcher is inhibited, and hesitates to ask the kinds of questions
he, or she wants for fear of being labelled a possible "foreign spy,"
the consequences may be devastating. How can one be expected to find a
cure for HIV/AIDS, address issues of climate change, or political
dissent in Iran and Israel, if they must concern themselves with
whether or not a colleague is taking notes, and monitoring their
behavior for the local FBI?
Arguably, the kind of ubiquitous suspiciousness the FBI, and
CIA, should be monitoring is the illegal monitoring of domestic and
foreign communications in violation of FISA and the First Amendment.
The country is at more risk of foreign spies and terrorists
infiltrating the government than the university, and we need to
quarantine fear as much as TB. Any college official, or federal agent,
who chooses to enable this program must be channeling J. Edgar Hoover,
the FBI founder notorious for investigating individuals not for crimes,
but for their political beliefs and activities.
It was Hoover's penchant, too, for using illegal wiretaps
which makes him remarkably contemporary, but even he might be hard
pressed to conceive of the day when one of his agents broke bread with
head honchos of some of the biggest think-tanks in the country, and
asked them to launch a program in which faculty engages in mutual
self-surveillance. The ACLU, in Massachusetts, is already speaking out
against this nascent, and spreading program, which is a deplorable
byproduct of the Patriot Act, and must be stopped, and stopped now.
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