Earlier this week, the AP revealed that 19-year-old Shamiur Rahman had been acting as a paid informant for the NYPD, who had sent him to spy on members of a Muslim student group at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Fittingly, the school’s president, Jeremy Travis, has announced that he is “deeply troubled” by the matter. In a letter to faculty and students, Travis said that he was unaware of the police operation on his campus: “I trust that you would agree that, in certain limited circumstances it is appropriate for law enforcement agencies to use informants to uncover criminal activity,” he wrote. But, he added, “There is no evidence…that this is the case at John Jay and we have not been advised otherwise.” So far, the police have declined to comment on Travis’s concerns.
