By MICHAEL ARNONE
The Chronicle of Higher Education
April 11, 2003, Friday

A strange invader roamed the skies over Indiana University at Bloomington in February: a white, single-propeller Cessna 182 that circled for hours on end. The airplane buzzed the city for more than a week, at noon, in late evening, and after midnight. Watchers craned their necks in curiosity -- and apprehension. What was it doing up there?

The answer was simple, if bizarre. After first denying any connection to the flyovers, officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation confessed that they were using the plane to conduct visual surveillance of the campus as part of the fight against terrorism. They had identified no terrorist threat against the university, but the agency said it was watching specific individuals, vehicles, and businesses, particularly those that sent faxes or e-mail late at night. Agents had also interviewed several international students on the campus.

FBI activity has increased at colleges and universities since the September 11 attacks and the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. Incidents like the one at Indiana are occurring with more and more frequency across the country, often with foreign students and scholars as the targets.

On February 26, agents from the FBI and other federal law-enforcement authorities stormed the University of Idaho, in Moscow. Dozens of agents swooped into the sleepy college town at 4:30 a.m. and raided the university's graduate-student housing. They arrested a Saudi graduate student with alleged terrorist ties and interrogated more than 20 other international students for more than four hours.

That same day, federal agents arrested an adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Oswego and charged him with funneling millions of dollars to Iraq.

A week earlier, federal prosecutors indicted Sami Al-Arian, a computer-engineering professor at the University of South Florida accused of helping Palestinian terrorists. A University of Central Florida professor and former student of Mr. Al-Arian's was arrested on immigration charges a month later. (All the men have denied any wrongdoing.) And last December, an Iraqi-born economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was questioned by an FBI agent and a university detective about his loyalty to the United States.

Fearing a return to the bad old days of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s -- when the FBI investigated, infiltrated, and disrupted campus activities with relative impunity -- faculty members, students, and some administrators are increasingly worried that the agency may again be running roughshod over their civil liberties. They also worry that college police officers are working with the FBI with little oversight by campus officials. And while willing to work with federal agents to pursue real threats, those officials do not want to cooperate in fishing expeditions.

If FBI agents have solid evidence, they have the right to question people, says Adel M. Mekraz, a marketing professor at Indiana and director of social activities for the Islamic Center of Bloomington, but not just because those people are "Saudi or Muslim."

The FBI and other law-enforcement agencies say they are protecting people from terrorism while respecting civil liberties. "We're working with campus law enforcement to make sure civil liberties aren't compromised," says Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman. "But we have an obligation to the American people to do everything we can to minimize the threat of another terrorist attack."

Remembering Earlier Eras

Disagreement over how far federal agents may go in their campus investigations is nothing new. Suspicions about law enforcement increased during the McCarthy era and reached their height between 1956 and 1971, when the FBI conducted a domestic counterintelligence program, called Cointelpro, to root out Communists. The program violated federal laws as the agency spied on civil-rights, antiwar, and student groups, and disrupted activities it deemed threats to national security. For decades, unease pervaded some academic circles.

"I remember someone saying, 'There's probably an agent monitoring us,'" says Dan Clawson, a sociology professor at UMass who, as an antiwar activist in 1971, stuffed envelopes for the War Resisters League. "I said, 'No, that's not true, we're just not that important.'

"Turns out I was wrong."

In 1968 and 1969, Mr. Clawson and his wife refused to pay a tax on their long-distance telephone bill because they believed the tax helped finance the Vietnam War. As the money they owed mounted -- to $3 -- two FBI agents visited Mr. Clawson's father-in-law at work to ask him to pay, says Mr. Clawson.

Concerns about overzealous law enforcement led to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa, which limited the information that colleges could disclose without court orders or student consent. In 1976, Sen. Frank F. Church, an Idaho Democrat, led a committee that criticized the Cointelpro program. Revelations of the FBI's activities fanned resentment against it at colleges.

September 11 reignited debate over balancing civil liberties and national security across all strata of American society. International students and scholars came under harsh scrutiny once news broke that one of the hijackers, Hani Hanjour, had entered the country on a student visa.

The legal cornerstone of the federal government's efforts to protect the country since then is the USA Patriot Act, a law that permits law-enforcement officials, including FBI agents, to apply wide-ranging and invasive techniques to track suspected terrorists, while reducing the level of judicial oversight that might slow down or restrict the use of those tools.

Among other things, the law makes it easier for law-enforcement agencies to share information and repeals some bans on the gathering of personal information.

The law allows the agencies to get search warrants based on less evidence and to keep such warrants secret.

The Patriot Act also alters privacy protections under Ferpa. The U.S. attorney general, his office, and its designees still need court orders to request information, but they can now require colleges not to record such requests. Federal agents can now also forbid colleges to tell people that they are being investigated.

Controversial from the start, the law has fomented raging debates over whether, by expanding powers and lowering accountability in the name of efficiency, it is throttling our liberties in the name of security.

Closer Partnerships

Under the Patriot Act, campus police departments are now working more closely with federal, state, and local authorities on intelligence work. H. Scott Doner is the police chief at Valdosta State University, in Georgia, and president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. He says that, among other changes, colleges now receive e-mail alerts from the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "We're more in touch now."

What most irks campus civil libertarians is that dozens of colleges have assigned campus-police officers to cooperate more closely on investigations that involve their institutions, in some cases creating liaison positions that are part of Joint Terrorism Task Forces with the FBI and other law-enforcement bodies. Most of those officers serve at urban institutions that have many foreign nationals, and they work from one day a month to full time with the FBI. They sometimes have security clearances that prohibit them from telling their campus superiors what they are doing when they're on loan.

That secrecy, asserts Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, gives the FBI a license to launch an investigation based on little hard evidence. "Basically, it's hard to know about the government's use of this power because so much of it has been done in secret."

Colleges are kept in the loop under such liaison arrangements, counters Lt. Tim McGraw, a public-information officer for the University of Colorado at Boulder's police department. The department has one detective assigned to work with the FBI. "We've never been left in the dark on what he's doing," the lieutenant says. "His accountability is still to the department, not to the FBI."

The liaisons file reports about their activities with their campus bosses, confirms the FBI's Mr. Bresson. And campus police departments value the information they get from the task forces, even if they don't know how the FBI obtained it, says Dolores A. Stafford, chief of police at George Washington University and president-elect of the campus-police association. "The information is more important than how they got the information," she says.

To some observers, the liaisons are justified. "In normal times, establishing a liaison with law enforcement would be seen by many colleges as possibly even chilling," says Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, director of the university's Center for Health and Homeland Security, and the top counterterrorism official in the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton. "But in this day and age," he continues, "there are two questions colleges need to face: the legitimate needs of law enforcement to do investigations properly authorized by federal law, and that targets of inquiry are adequately protected, advised, counseled, and reassured through the process."

Depending on how that balance tips, the FBI and other agencies can create fear that some believe hinders academic freedom. "If people know law-enforcement agents might investigate them," says Sara Lennox, director of the UMass program on social thought and political economy, "they may not say or do things that the government doesn't like." In the past, people have lost their jobs because authorities linked them, fairly or not, to subversive organizations.

"The particular danger on college campuses," she says, "is that freedom of speech and inquiry is so central to what education is all about."

Faculty unions are on guard. "There's definite concern in this general climate that the USA Patriot Act symbolizes could lead to abuses like in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s," says Mark F. Smith, director of government relations for the American Association of University Professors, which is on the lookout for any abuses that could serve as a legal test case.

Tracking Foreign Students

One of the biggest changes colleges have faced since September 11 is that government and law-enforcement officials are so openly and methodically tracking and investigating foreign nationals. In February, the FBI announced that it wanted to interview all Iraqis -- estimated at 50,000 -- living in the United States. So far, agents have questioned about 5,000, FBI officials say.

Since last September, the federal government has required colleges to keep current their entries in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, a database to track foreign students. The government has also demanded that men from 25 mostly Arab and Muslim countries get photographed and fingerprinted under a special program, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.

The crackdown has spooked international students and scholars. They worry they are being profiled, especially if they are Arab or Muslim, and will be arrested and deported for minor visa infractions, or won't be allowed back into the United States if they leave.

"The overall mood these days is that many international students are feeling they should bend over and let this pass because things aren't rational," says Amr A. Sabry, an associate professor of computer science at Indiana and president of its Islamic Center. But some students "say it's time to leave this country."

That thought petrifies the officials who run universities' lucrative international-student programs. They dread a mass exodus of foreign students to Australian, British, and other institutions that are eager to enroll foreign nationals fed up with their treatment in the United States.

Law-enforcement officers frequently rebut civil-libertarian criticism by saying that current laws are sufficient to protect civil liberties and that some elements of personal privacy must be sacrificed at a time of national crisis.

No Fear?

Some faculty members believe that institutional policies will protect them. At many colleges, the word is out not to talk to the FBI without permission from the administration. Donica Thomas Varner, assistant general counsel at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, says her office handles all requests for information from law-enforcement agencies. "Requests have to be consistent with the Patriot Act," she says. "They need a lawful subpoena."

Jared L. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University, agrees. "When a law-enforcement agency requests information," he says, "we're happy to comply with a subpoena, but otherwise we don't."

Mr. Cohon, a civil engineer by training, is also a member of President Bush's Homeland Security Council. He says the council has not explicitly discussed civil liberties. That may be because, despite the widespread campus fears, few colleges have reported actual problems stemming from the heightened security. Musaddak J. Al-Habeeb, the Iraqi professor questioned at UMass, has said that his short interview with the FBI was polite and cleared him of suspicion.

"Even if monitoring exists on campus, interference is highly unlikely," says Ralph M. Stein, a constitutional-law professor at Pace University.

A prevalent misconception about the liaisons is that somehow the FBI link will draw federal agents to colleges, says Ms. Stafford, of George Washington. "What's going to bring federal law enforcement to your campus isn't whether you have someone on a task force," she says. "It's what's happening on your campus."

Indeed, many UMass faculty members say the questioning of Mr. Al-Habeeb has not created a climate of fear on the campus, says Ernest D. May, a professor of music and secretary of the Faculty Senate. "This campus is pretty much as normal," he says, "and this is a pretty outspoken campus."

Still, some faculty members, including Mr. Clawson, the antiwar veteran, are alarmed. While he has not seen any changes at the university yet, he says that the interrogation of Mr. Al-Habeeb might have been the "leading edge of a new wave of repression."

At the University of Idaho, "the fear in our international community is profound," says Elizabeth B. Brandt, a law professor. Students worry they will be interrogated, deported, or kept from their research, she says. She describes one woman, an Indian Muslim, who told her husband to burn his books on radical Islam in case their house was searched.

Tougher Act May Follow

As the war with Iraq continues, the FBI has given every indication that it is increasing the surveillance and questioning of foreign nationals in the United States.

And the Justice Department has drafted the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, informally known as Patriot Act II. Building on the original, the legislation would foster even more sharing of information among government agencies and would increase their access to credit reports and other personal data without the need for subpoenas. It would also grant the attorney general unlimited authority to approve wiretaps and physical searches of property, without judicial approval, for up to 15 days after the United States suffered an "attack creating a national emergency."

More important, the legislation would broaden the definition of terrorism and stiffen punishments for terror-related crimes. A striking provision would enable the government to strip the citizenship from and deport any American citizen who, knowingly or not, helped groups seen as supporting terrorism.

So far, Patriot Act II remains a draft only. The word around Washington is that it might be introduced in Congress soon.

If the legislation is enacted as currently written, colleges may look back on their present anxieties as the good old days.