Dangerous First Steps

On Tuesday, the Justice Department asked officials nationwide to question 5,000 mostly Middle Eastern men living legally in the United States. The federal government wants to profile their activities simply because they come from countries with suspected terrorist links.

Though not every single person on this list may be Arab, the vast majority are being contacted because they come from the Middle East. Singling out people from this area for different treatment is de facto racial profiling.

This should not come as a shock to Americans. After all, since the tragedies of Sept. 11, Americans have willingly given up many conveniences, as well as freedoms, for the sake of greater collective security. We have grown accustomed to longer lines at airports; we have toyed with the idea of national identification cards, and yes, we have even quietly tolerated the racial profiling of Arab Americans and Middle Eastern nationals.

For example, on Nov. 12, The New York Times reported that officials from the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) are quietly checking up on Middle Eastern students at more than 200 college campuses nationwide. School administrators are calling this canvass of the halls of academia the most severe since the Cold War. In addition to asking “what subjects the students are studying, whether they are performing well and where they are living,” investigators are also interviewing students, sometimes repeatedly, about everything from favorite local restaurants to their plans after graduation.

While Harvard’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions has not been contacted by federal officials, at least one business school student of Middle Eastern descent has been questioned by the FBI.

Proponents of the “check-ups” argue that since one of the terrorists allegedly involved in the Sept. 11 tragedies was living in the U.S. with a student visa, this canvassing is warranted. But this justification does not excuse a blatant and racist invasion of privacy. Foreign students should not be targeted or flagged simply because of their nationality; a person’s ethnicity does not amount to probable cause. When investigators have substantiated and convincing evidence, then questioning particular students is merited.

Racial profiling strikes at the heart of what it means to be free in America. Granted, these are trying times—national security has perhaps never been so strikingly important. However, as President George W. Bush trumpets grand visions of acceptance and tolerance as the American way, it is hypocritical not to hold federal investigators to the same standards.

Our treatment of Arab Americans and Middle Eastern nationals who are living in the U.S. is eerily similar to the Japanese American internment during World War II. Many argue that the singling out of Japanese Americans was, to a large extent, racially motivated (German Americans were not sent to detention camps). Today’s singling out of Arab Americans is, to some degree, a result of an already present racial bias. As we travel down this slippery slope, we may once again find ourselves sacrificing the rights of a racial minority for the supposed protection of the general public.

With the Justice Department’s newest requests to question the 5,000 mostly Middle Eastern men and the canvassing of college campuses nationwide, we must be more careful than ever to keep history from repeating itself.

It took 50 years for the government to finish compensating Japanese victims for their unfair treatment. In 1999, then-Attorney General Janet Reno called the episode “a tragic chapter in the history of our nation...a time when we took away the liberty of an entire community of Americans.”

We are closer to this state than it may initially appear. After two months of investigations, the government is still detaining many of the 1,000 suspects and witnesses it took into custody after the attacks. Some are foreign nationals detained by the INS; others have been arrested for small offenses. Still others—hundreds, according to the Washington Post—are locked up, not having been charged with any crime, but simply as “material witnesses” to the events of Sept. 11. According to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, they are being held in an effort to prevent more attacks.

Though this detainment is not of the same scale and gravity as the Japanese internment, the threat to American values is the same.

Because the White House has not released new information about these arrests, the media has been unable to report extensively on the detainments. Furthermore, Amnesty International has charged the U.S. with rights abuses in the handling of prisoners. They cite cases where detainees were denied access to lawyers, kept in solitary confinement and given food that their religion forbids them from eating.

We are living in unprecedented times. Unimaginable events have occurred. As a result, measures that were once unthinkable are quickly becoming commonplace under the aegis of national security. Never has the line between civil liberties and collective defense been so blurry, but especially now, in this time of crisis, we must defend our civil liberties most adamantly.

Benjamin J. Toff ’05 lives in Wigglesworth Hall.