Since Donald Trump returned to office nine months ago, his administration has launched high-profile investigations of universities that he believes were too slow to crack down on pro-Palestine protesters.
The latest probe of a college, however, is not coming from the White House — and it has won surprising support from Arab and Muslim groups who allege that university researchers may have contributed to government surveillance.
The investigation led by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., takes aim at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, a decade-old project in the nation’s capital that has given an academic stamp to the effort to uncover the alleged jihadists and domestic extremists in our midst.
The program’s staffers make frequent guest appearances on cable television to opine on subjects ranging from the rise of antisemitism after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel to the threat of right-wing extremists in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot.
“If the TSA used that group’s reports as the only ‘evidence,’ it’s a scandal.”
Paul announced an investigation of the program at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee last month on the Transportation Security Administration’s “Quiet Skies” watchlist program. He alleged that the George Washington program’s employees may have had an unduly close relationship with the Department of Homeland Security, TSA’s parent agency.
Advocacy groups working on issues that affect Arab and Muslim communities — frequent targets of government watchlisting efforts since the September 11 attacks — welcomed Paul’s investigation of the George Washington program.
“This week’s hearing confirmed what millions suspected: Washington insiders weaponized the watchlist system against law-abiding Americans,” the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Muslim Public Affairs Council said in a joint press release shortly after the hearing. “If the TSA used that group’s reports as the only ‘evidence,’ it’s a scandal.”
Internal records suggest the government relied on Program on Extremism research to add names to TSA watchlists, Paul said. (The university’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.)
Paul is exploring how TSA got the information. He told The Intercept that his committee has asked George Washington for records that would help determine whether its researchers were actively involved in nominating travelers for surveillance.
“We do think that what was going on is that things that would be unseemly for government, they were farming out a little bit,” Paul said.
Paul’s concerns at the September 30 hearing focused primarily on TSA’s watchlisting of conservatives such as Tulsi Gabbard, the Democrat-turned-MAGA diehard who was trailed by federal air marshals last year, and people suspected of association with the January 6 riot.
“What was going on is that things that would be unseemly for government.”
In some cases, Paul alleged, people were trailed simply because they traveled to Washington to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally preceding the riot. One woman added to a TSA watchlist,