From the Orange County Register
The police are investigating a recent incident at the University of California- Irvine. A Muslim student, Yasser Ahmed, claims he feared a FBI agent was going to run over him; the bureau says a cinderblock was thrown at the agent’s truck. Ahmed had demanded to know the identity of the person in the truck, whom he said was following him, and had tried to take a photo of the vehicle’s license plate.
UCI’s Muslim Student Union has been holding twice-daily rallies called “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” to protest Israeli policies toward Palestinians. As part of these protests, students erected a large wooden representation of the wall that Israelis have built in occupied Palestine. The incident occurred while the students, as required daily by UCI administrators, were dismantling the structure.
The FBI says the agent came on campus “in the course of an investigation” but that “[t]here is no surveillance being conducted at educational institutions.” Moreover, the agent did not violate any policy by refusing to identify himself, because he was not conducting an arrest.
In addition to asking whether pro-Israeli views are part of the mix in campus debate, the issue of surveillance on campuses is an intriguing one.