(
)
Mayor Bloomberg went head to head yesterday with the president of Yale University for condemning the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim students at the prominent Ivy League school.
“I don’t know why keeping the country safe is antithetical to the values of Yale,” the mayor said during a press conference about jobs in Brooklyn.
“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 and that the terrorists who want to take away the very values that Yale has, expounds and survives with [don’t succeed].”
Bloomberg’s comments came in response to an e-mail message sent by Yale President Richard Levin to the university community denouncing the NYPD’s actions.
“I am writing to state, in the strongest possible terms, that police surveillance based on religion, nationality or peacefully expressed political opinions are antithetical to the values of Yale, the academic community and the United States,” Levin said Monday night. “I want to make sure our community knows that the Yale Police Department has not participated in any monitoring by the NYPD and was entirely unaware of NYPD activities until the recent news reports.”
On Saturday, The Associated Press reported that city cops were dispatched to several universities across the northeast to monitor the activities of Muslim groups, including at Yale and six colleges within the five boroughs — Columbia, NYU, Queens, Baruch, Brooklyn and La Guardia Community.
Police spokesman Paul Browne said cops monitored student Web sites and collected publicly available information, but did so only between 2006 and 2007.
He pointed out that a dozen people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the United States and abroad had once been members of Muslim student organizations.