By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff, and Eric Goldscheider, Globe Correspondent
Boston Globe
January 9, 2003

Largely unnoticed by students and faculty, university police departments across the country have begun collaborating with the FBI in recent months, committing campus police officers to work on antiterrorism task forces anywhere from a few hours to several days per month.

At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a campus police detective reports to the Springfield office of the FBI nearly full time. Other large public universities across the country report similar relationships, although most involve a smaller time commitment.

The assignments were triggered by a post-9/11 FBI invitation to local police departments to cooperate with regional anti terrorism task forces. City and town police departments are also assigning officers to work with the FBI, without controversy. But such partnerships tread on sensitive ground at universities, where some older professors still resent the FBI's heavy-handed 1950s tactics on campus. Those universities are already struggling to balance new government security demands with student privacy and academic freedom.

"Universities exist to follow ideas, and to explore things that may not be popular at that moment, and to question ideas that people hold dear," said Dan Clawson, a sociology professor at UMass-Amherst. "Anything that tends to limit that attacks the heart of the university."

UMass-Amherst faculty members have kept up a steady drumbeat of protest since the revelation in November that a university police detective, working part time for the FBI, helped a federal agent question an Iraqi-born economics professor about his politics. A meeting about the episode, held during one of last month's snowstorms, drew almost 200 people, mostly faculty.

Concerned about the questioning of the UMass-Amherst professor, the American Civil Liberties Union is demanding that the FBI reveal the scope of its involvement on college campuses nationwide. In response to an initial request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the ACLU received a form letter from the FBI acknowledging the inquiry. An FBI spokesman in Washington said its request is "in the queue," but could not say when the agency would respond.

Michael O'Reilly, who heads the Springfield FBI office, said UMass Police Detective Barry Flanders is essentially working full time for the Pioneer Valley Joint Terrorism Task Force. UMass-Amherst still pays Flanders's annual salary of $41,359, although O'Reilly said the federal agency pays for any overtime and incidental expenses.

Besides UMass-Amherst, officers from at least five Western Massachusetts cities and towns - including Springfield, Pittsfield, and Amherst - elected to participate in the program, which O'Reilly described as a two-way effort to share information. "My efforts are trying not only to get information from the local area but to get information worldwide back to the community," said O'Reilly.

A Globe survey of public universities has found a wide range of working relationships between campus police and the FBI, most less time-consuming than the partnership between Flanders and the Springfield FBI office.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an FBI liaison who devotes two days a month to antiterrorism work, a spokeswoman said. At the University of California at Los Angeles, the liaison attends FBI task force meetings and brings back information, a minimal time commitment "that could peak dependent on a particular issue," a spokeswoman said.

At the University of Colorado at Boulder, a police liaison spends an estimated three hours a week working with the FBI, in a partnership that predates the 2001 terrorist attacks. University of Rhode Island police assist the Providence FBI office on a "very sporadic" basis, receiving a call maybe once a month, said the liaison, Captain Brian Cummings.

The University of Florida Police Department reported the most significant collaboration: An officer is assigned full time to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, where he works with both state police and the FBI.

"A lot of what he does we don't know about," said spokesman Joe Sharkey. "We wouldn't know if there were investigations or interviews on campus."

Other university police forces have so far declined the FBI's invitation. Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, has no liaison to the FBI; neither does Penn State. The University of Michigan is only considering creating such a position at its Ann Arbor campus, where there are 37,000 students.

"Because the university is so large, and draws from around the world, it might make some sense to investigate it," said Diane Brown, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety.

UMass Police Chief Barbara O'Connor defended the assignment, which she said is not limited to investigations related to the university. Flanders "is helping them muddle through the millions of things that have come in since 9/11," said the chief, who is not privy to information about Flanders's work for the bureau.

"I think it's wise for us to help contribute to the safety of this region and this state as part of our public service," said O'Connor. She also says Flanders's help serves a protective function for the university: If a UMass officer wasn't on the task force, she said, the FBI could investigate on campus without her knowledge.

Jeffrey Sedgwick, an associate professor of political science at UMass-Amherst who served in the Justice Department under President Ronald Reagan, said a network of FBI liaisons "seems like the only reasonable response to the problem, if you're going to get called on the carpet for every security breach. How are you going to protect yourself . . . other than to follow up on every tip?"

None of the spokespeople at other universities was aware of any controversy around the arrangements at their schools; in most cases, collaboration has begun quietly.

Like most American universities, UMass-Amherst is adjusting to a number of other security-driven requirements. After several Sept. 11 hijackers entered the country with student visas, universities have dealt with new delays in the processing of student visas, and new demands for information about foreign students. A computerized system for tracking foreign students is being implemented this month by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. At UMass-Amherst, professors also raise concerns of past FBI abuses, including interrogations designed to intimidate people holding allegedly "un-American" views during the McCarthy era, and infiltrating political organizations during the anti-Vietnam war movement.

Milton Cantor, a professor emeritus in UMass-Amherst's history department, said many students aren't aware that the FBI invaded people's privacy in the past with wiretaps and surveillance. As for the potential chilling effect on campus discourse, most students "don't give a damn," he said.

But, he suggested, they should.

"There is no reason to believe that the bureau has changed at all," said Cantor. "Given the climate outside the FBI, I think it's entirely predictable that the FBI will be intrusive."

Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.

CORRECTION:
* CORRECTION: BECAUSE OF A REPORTING ERROR, A PAGE ONE STORY THURSDAY ABOUT UNIVERSITY POLICE WORKING WITH THE FBI INCORRECTLY CHARACTERIZED THE NUMBER OF SEPT. 11 HIJACKERS WHO ENTERED THE COUNTRY ON STUDENT VISAS. ACCORDING TO THE US STATE DEPARTMENT, AT LEAST ONE ENTERED ON A STUDENT VISA.