September 11 and the Academic Profession: A Symposium

Joan Wallach Scott, Robert M. O'Neil, Ahmad Dallal, Melvin T. Steely, William Friedheim, and Stanley N. Katz

Joan Wallach Scott
Institute for Advanced Study

But in the atmosphere of heightened patriotism that has accompanied the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the launching of war in Afghanistan, it is almost inevitable that those promises will be broken. The representation of the war in the stark moral terms of good and evil puts anyone who would criticize the good on the side of evil; it leaves little room for the kind of debate and discussion that would deepen our understanding of what has happened, that would expose the complexities of the situation and the need for policies that address those complexities.

This is exactly the kind of debate and discussion typically associated with universities; it is the kind of debate and discussion that academic freedom is meant to protect. John Dewey, a founder of the AAUP, pointed out in his 1902 essay "Academic Freedom" that scholars who dealt with "the problems of life" were more likely to come up against "deep-rooted prejudice and intense emotional reaction." "These exist," he continued, "because of the habits and modes of life to which the people have accustomed themselves. To attack them is to appear to be hostile to institutions in which the worth of life is bound up."

To appear to be questioning patriotism, of course, makes the emotional reaction even more intense. Hence we have seen in recent weeks a spate of journalistic denunciations of student peace protesters; administrative reprimands for faculty who have suggested that years of American foreign policy might have something to do with the current situation; corporate "partners" threatening to withdraw financing from universities where teach-ins have taken place; and donors demanding punishment for "traitorous" members of university communities. We commend the university presidents who have had the courage to speak out—as the State University of New York at Stony Brook’s Shirley Strum Kenney did last fall—in defense of universities as centers of criticism, defense, and debate in demo-cratic societies. My reply to those I have argued with about the limits of free speech in time of war is to say that patriotism in the United States involves the protection of our most valuable social resources. The critical space of the university is such a resource, and academic freedom is its protection. In the weeks and months to come this will be a theme that the AAUP will have to repeat loudly and clearly.

Robert M. O’Neil
University of Virginia

What seems surprising, some weeks after the attacks, is how relatively limited and cautious the response of the academic community has been. There were a handful of strident faculty comments, on both sides of the issue. They ranged from, at one extreme, a California community college teacher who allegedly called Muslim students in his class "terrorists" and "murderers" who had "killed five thousand people" to the University of New Mexico historian who told his class on the day of the attack, "Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote."

There were some potentially troubling comments at an early October teach-in from several City University of New York faculty, followed by a sharp critique from CUNY’s chancellor, but a milder than expected response, several weeks later, from the board of trustees. Though Muslim students have undoubtedly felt uncomfortable at many campuses, and some Middle Eastern foreign students returned home after the attacks, student response has also been surprisingly muted, and peace protests few in number and relatively small in size.

Some observers blame or credit the modest degree of campus reaction to a general stifling or suppression of academic speech. The head of the conservative Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, for example, had a simple explanation: "No matter the politics, speech and vigorous debate is verboten at college campuses." Without debating the entire issue, such a theory badly misses the point about what has happened since September 11.

In fact, some rather strong statements have been made, across the political spectrum, and apparently without reprisal of the sort one might have feared. That result reflects not only a degree of national consensus we have not seen since Pearl Harbor, but also a measure of tolerance and flexibility on both sides. The New Mexico historian apologized profusely for his outburst, conceding that he was "a jerk" but insisting that the First Amendment protects his "right to be a jerk." Meanwhile, the vice chair of CUNY’s board of trustees, Benno Schmidt, issued a dispassionate statement befitting a First Amendment scholar and former Ivy League president.

The recent tensions might easily have escalated beyond anyone’s capacity to control—and such escalation could yet occur if conditions worsen substantially. Meanwhile, however, the relatively measured response from virtually all parts of the academic community should be reassuring.

Ahmad Dallal
Stanford University

Aside from the fixation on the technical and operational dimensions of the war against terrorism, the primary interest of the mainstream media has been to foreground the "Islamic roots of terror." Against the image of lame Muslims defensively pleading that Islam is a religion of love and peace, an army of "experts" with little if any knowledge of the languages, cultures, or lived experiences of historical Muslims explore and outline what they claim are the inherent violent tendencies in Islam. In the name of unity and patriotism, other forms of analysis— those that seek to under-stand the history of the current crisis in all of its complexities and go beyond the simplistic cultural polarities widely circulated among policy makers and apologetic media pundits—have been excluded from public view. Little, indeed, is said about the disastrous effects of an American foreign policy that has supported many twisted dictatorships in the Muslim world and helped thwart democratic reforms, or about the American-Saudi partnership that used Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union and in the process turned the country into a breeding ground for misery and monstrosity.

Yet now, more than ever before, scholars and public intellectuals have to summon the courage and intellectual integrity to address these very historical and moral dimensions of the crisis of terror. The September 11 murderers must be brought to justice. But a vengeful war against a faceless enemy and a country with no viable targets other than its population, a war that locks us and generations to come into cultural and religious enmity, will only breed desperate violence and destruction. And such will be this war unless we make sure that the catastrophic policies of the past are not repeated.

While the September 11 acts were criminal, the grievances that fed and inspired them were real, and no counter-terrorism policy can succeed without addressing them. The list of grievances is long, but it invariably boils down to the obscene indifference to the loss of human lives that do not appear on American television screens; indifference to the loss of Palestinian lives from among a brutalized population reduced to dismal existence by an ever-more-atrocious occupation; indifference to the loss of the lives of a half million Iraqi children as a result of a cruel sanctions regime that has failed to achieve its declared objective of dislodging the brutal tyrant securely seated on his throne; and indifference to the impending loss of lives in what threatens, in the words of Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, to be "the world’s worst humanitarian disaster," a disaster now unfolding over the ravaged hills of Afghanistan.

In a little story printed in small script and hidden in a heap of engineered news reports, a New York Times reporter briefly describes a father’s return trip to Afghanistan with his injured son from a hospital in northern Pakistan. The "young boy, his head and one leg wrapped in bloodied bandages, clung to his father’s back as the older man trudged back to Afghanistan . . . and his father stared straight ahead and did not reply when asked how his son had been injured." A father should not have to speak, but we should, and we should speak now.

Melvin T. Steely
State University of West Georgia

Ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban and its repressive regime of homicidal intolerance is a good thing, as the smiles on the faces of the liberated women of Kabul attest. Rooting out the al-Qaeda terrorist organization will provide some measure of security from those who would continue to do us ill. It will also demonstrate that there is a price to pay for acts of war against the United States. Most people I know, in and out of the academic community, understand that. They are patriotic and offer no apology for being so.

At the time of the first attack, I was showing a videotape on the rise of Islam in my world civilization class and had stepped into the hall when a colleague asked, "Have you heard? A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." I dismissed my class early, and we all went to the TV room in the student center, which was filling with students and faculty. It was unbelievable, almost like a movie, and it held us transfixed until the first tower collapsed. Watching that as it happened brought a sense of revulsion and helplessness that forced many of us outside for air and provoked both tears and anger. The news came about the attack on the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania. The media quickly connected the string of assaults on American targets (embassies, military dorms, warships, and the World Trade Center itself) going back a decade. The anger grew but was focused on the terrorists. There was no group condemnation of all Muslims. The unity created was not of condemnation but rather of pride of country and a desire to "get the guy who did this." We expected the usual "blame America first" professors to excitedly hold forums and teach-ins, and we were not disappointed. As they explained that these attacks were deserved and were really our own fault, most faculty and students understood that free speech and academic freedom gave these professors the right to express their views. It did not guarantee they would be taken seriously. They were, as one student noted, "doing their thing," and the school gave them the time and space in which to do it. They were mostly ignored. The university community understood that the academic freedom cherished by the professors critical of American policy also protects the rights of those who want to express support for their country and its leaders. Academic freedom guarantees the right to be critical. It does not protect the critic from being criticized in turn by those who disagree. Both sides had their say, and the concept of the university was upheld. So it was on our campus and, I think, at most colleges and universities around the country.

I have belonged to the AAUP since the 1960s. I supported academic freedom when it protected liberal points of view from those on the right who sought to stifle them. I also, more recently, supported those on the right when their freedom was under assault from the left. If my school is typical, then I think academic freedom is safe. Indeed, I have been generally pleased by the concern for free speech expressed not only on campuses but also in the community and by our political leaders. I was also heartened by our students and numerous other Georgians who quickly reassured the Muslims among us that they were not being blamed for the actions of the terrorists. While war necessarily tests our freedoms, I think most Americans under-stand the need to work to preserve our basic rights and at the same time pre-serve the country that guarantees those rights. Greater challenges to academic freedom came during World War II and during the Cold War. Academic freedom and free speech not only survived those challenges but actually expanded. I do not share the bleak outlook expressed by some of my academic colleagues. I think academic freedom is going to be okay.

William Friedheim
Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York

"Intense" was the word most frequently used by faculty on October 1 to describe their classes on their first day back, almost three weeks after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (WTC). Physically and emotionally, BMCC was a very different place from what it was before September 11.

I was not on or near campus at 8:45 A.M. on Tuesday, September 11, but almost all my students and many colleagues were. One of BMCC’s two buildings, a fourteen-story tower, Fiterman Hall, sits barely ten yards north of World Trade Tower number seven. When hit by burning debris from towers one and two, WTC seven caught fire, imploded, and collapsed into a heap that eventually came to rest against the six lower floors of the south side of Fiterman. Almost two hours earlier, students, faculty, and staff had safely evacuated the building.

BMCC houses the majority of its 17,000 students in a six-block- long main building stretching from Chambers Street to North Moore Street, four short blocks north of ground zero. The college emptied that building in quick order after the first plane struck the WTC. But thousands of BMCC students, colleagues, and staff were in the neighborhood—some just arriving and caught in subways or trains under the WTC; some exiting from the subway into the WTC as the first plane hit; some on the streets as debris and bodies began falling from the burning towers; and many more on the streets later in the morning when towers one, two, and seven collapsed. Many of the latter told harrowing stories of fleeing a wall of soot, smoke, pulverized matter, and toxic fumes that rapidly moved up and across avenues. One student, still with a big bruise on his right shoulder three weeks later, claimed that adrenaline was running so high that he never remembered smashing his shoulder that day into anything or anybody.

Our community—faculty, students, and administrative, professional, clerical, and maintenance staff—needed to come together to heal. But for three weeks, bonding was not possible. BMCC was off limits, occupied by a small army of disaster and rescue workers in a neighborhood thick with smoke and chemical odors and in a main building without normal power and phone lines. We were not there to counsel, talk, and listen to one another, to share and understand what we experienced so that we could reclaim some sense of direction over our everyday campus lives.

When we returned on October 1, we did so with three weeks of pent-up fears, emotions, and uncertainty. In my first class, the initial reaction of students was muted. I then asked them to write about what happened on September 11. I told them that I would also write, but made clear that if they felt awkward or uncomfortable, they need not put pen to paper. Everyone wrote. When we broke into small groups, then later shared as a class, stories of pain and trauma filled the room.

BMCC students are among the poorest and most diverse in the nation; speak over a hundred different languages; and live lives already fragile and complicated by the delicate balancing of school, work, parenting, and everyday existence in New York. They came back to a college in a neighborhood made abnormal by police checkpoints, unseemly odors, and visible horror—piles of twisted steel and debris just to the south. (A day later, cranes, bulldozers, and dump trucks began depositing—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week—the remains of the WTC onto barges parked on the Hudson River directly across the street from BMCC’s main building. The dust was unsettling, but not as unsettling as this constant, very palpable reminder of what had happened three weeks earlier.)

In class, students told of lost friends, horrific images of people jumping from flaming towers, injuries sustained from falling debris, and running, running, running. Only a few students were caught on the streets when the towers collapsed and thousands of people began fleeing. But those metaphors of running communicated sheer terror—images that I remember the most vividly from the written and oral testimony of students in that first class.

Some of my black and Latino students spoke about racial profiling, feeling pulled one way as past victims, and pulled in another in the context of a new set of events that made large numbers of Muslims and Arabs targets of unjustified suspicion. Most resisted the tendency to profile, identifying it as wrong, but nonetheless feeling conflicted. When one student spun wild conspiracy theories about religious fanaticism, Muslim students protested. But so did others—calmly and with wisdom, considerable knowledge, and great tolerance. The discussion that ensued restored the faith that many of us had in one another—and in our diversity.

Over the next week, the college routines looked much like they did before September 11. But they were not. Forty new classrooms, replacing those lost in Fiterman, crowded the main building and trailers parked on the streets outside. In five days, construction workers built, wired, painted, insulated, and furnished classrooms in areas that were once cafeterias, fitness centers, and atriums. But feats of new construction coexisted side by side with the constant reminders of mass destruction: foul smells, misshapen steel, closed subway stations, damaged lives, and economic and emotional tremors in the aftermath of the attacks—students losing jobs, the city and its public universities losing revenues, the college losing students, and the BMCC community losing control over mundane, everyday details it once took for granted. There is a gritty resiliency to life in New York, including life at its colleges and schools, but the closer you get to ground zero, the more you see that New York toughness mixed with a new sense of vulnerability.

Stanley N. Katz
Princeton University

I took the photocopied texts with me on a train to Washington, D.C., that left my hometown, Princeton, New Jersey, at 6:45 A.M. on September 11. I intended to read on the way down, and begin writing on my laptop on the way back from a daylong meeting. Like the rest of us, however, I was mugged by reality. I got to a friend’s office at 9:10 A.M. and spent about an hour watching the world fall apart on television before it dawned on me that I should try to get home before Washington shut down. I was, of course, too late.

When I arrived at Union Station around 10:30 A.M. (having taken the subway against my friend’s advice), I found the station in the process of being shut down. I was forced into the plaza outside, where I seemed to be the only person without a cell phone—and for the first time, I felt hopelessly isolated without this technology. I walked back to my friend’s office, had lunch, and checked into a hotel so that I could continue to watch American life imploding. But, luckily, I discovered that the trains would start up again at 4 P.M., and took the subway (nearly empty) to Union Station and caught the first Amtrak heading north.

Imagine yourself trying to write about justice and universities on that train. Of course, I could not write a word. I spent the whole trip asking myself if there was anything in my religious or philosophical repertoire that could sustain the concept of justice. As of 6:30 P.M. on September 11, when the train stopped to let me off at Princeton Junction (and me alone, since the train crew was responding to individual requests for service!), I could not. And cannot.

And I suppose that is, for me, the most profound damage of September 11. My moral universe has been rendered dysfunctional. I envy those who seem to have come through the experience with renewed confidence in justice, humankind, God, and the United States. My friend David Halberstam has just written a beautiful prose poem in praise of the United States as a nation in the November issue of Vanity Fair. I admire the writing, but I do not share his affirmation. My mood is closer to the dark thoughts of my colleague Toni Morrison, whose memorial statement delivered at the Princeton outdoor service for the victims of September 11 is printed in the same issue of Vanity Fair.

But I have to say that being a university teacher at such a time is for me a tremendous consolation. I have many people to talk to about this crisis, and I find it especially helpful to engage students. I moderated a public discussion of September 11 at the university on September 15. Much of it was what I expected—grief, confusion, outrage, pity, and anger—though none the less difficult for that. But there was a minority (I use my words carefully) undercurrent of a special sort of anger I had not anticipated, anger against the United States as an imperial power that deliberately raped the developing world and deserved what had come to it. The thought was not so surprising as the tone (totally dispassionate and unengaged) and the language (somewhere between H. Rap Brown and Franz Fanon). The angriest voices sounded very middle class, as though the speakers had awakened (to their astonishment) during the Vietnam War.

But that sentiment has not reappeared at Princeton. The two most prominent streams of reaction to September 11 here appear to be antiwar and antiterrorism, the latter a bit hard to distinguish from prowar and pro-Israel. But, so far as I can tell from reading the Daily Princetonian and talking to students, only a small number are truly engaged in dispute. Indeed, it is hard to know if most students are thinking or feeling much about September 11 at all. I confess that I am disappointed that there is not more contention and more discourse. Princeton is not a very political place. But of course I cannot know what students do not articulate, and I suppose there is, the silence notwithstanding, some deep and widespread damage.

I am of course a professional, and I finally did pull myself sufficiently together the weekend before the Texas A&M colloquium to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). I am not a philosopher, and I doubt what I had to say is very profound. I distinguished between procedural justice in the university (being fair to individuals who work in, for, and with the university) and substantive justice (behaving justly in and to the larger society). I acknowledged the long-standing dispute between those who, like myself, have wanted the universities to speak and act justly on the "big" issues (like war), and those who have made cogent and reasoned arguments to the contrary. I have a position on the matter, and I certainly cannot resolve it. But I did conclude by saying that if we are to be just in our substantive educational purposes, our first responsibility is to be just in our teaching of students, especially undergraduates, and to inculcate in them the capacity to determine what, by their own lights, justice is.

And I guess that is as far as I have gotten as I write these words on October 21. I have not recovered my personal intellectual or moral balance, and just now I do not see how I will. But I am by calling and profession a teacher, and I cannot think of a more urgent or welcome challenge than to try to work through this nightmare with my students. I suppose that is all I need for the moment.

 Printer-Friendly Page