The University commemorated the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks Monday with poetry readings, daffodil planting, and a panel discussion on its after-effects. The memorial began with the ringing of bells at 8:46 a.m. and 9:02 a.m., the times when hijacked airplanes struck the World Trade Center towers.
The panel discussion, entitled “9/11 in Retrospect,” featured a diverse group of speakers offering their interpretations of the impact of 9/11 on the United States and abroad. Moderated by Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Government Donald Moon, the panel discussion provided an analysis through the lens of social and cultural critique. Their approach to understanding the implications of the attacks ran the gamut from examining United States foreign policy to probing pop culture.
Professor of English and American Studies Joel Pfister posited that the entertainment industry’s response to 9/11 was the result of a culture rooted in a voyeuristic and consumptive habit that is uniquely American. When former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani and President Bush assuaged the national psyche in the weeks following the attacks, Pfister reminded the audience, Americans were urged to remain staunch in the face of terrorism in part by going out and going shopping. Now, Pfister claims, Americans have effectively turned 9/11 into a kind of commodity.
Pfister also explained the effect of what he described as American “rock and awe,” which, according to him, is a trend following 9/11 in which rock music and rocking are increasingly associated with asserting American pride and power. Pfsiter referred to a scene in the docudrama “The Road to Guantanamo” in which heavy metal is used to torture prisoners, amounting to what he called “a parody of American disco.” As a verb, he said, “rocking” at once edifies troops and threatens American enemies, adding an element of pop to the vocabulary of the War on Terror.
How Americans see their counterparts in the Middle East was transformed, though more subtly than most assume, according to Professor of History Bruce Masters.
“9/11 in and of itself didn’t change [the Middle East] but made it real to United States citizens,” Masters said.
He explained that, as a part of the Middle East’s emergence in the American consciousness, there is now a nascent but rapidly growing movement to the study of the region, as well as Islam more broadly. In the same way that the Cold War whetted an academic appetite in students for all things Russian, students today are interested in subjects made popular by contemporary issues.
“Arabic is the new Russian,” Masters said.
He pointed out, however, that students hoping to live and study in the Middle East are heavily disadvantaged by the effects of the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 actions. According to Masters, students might not be able to study and live in the region in the same way he did in his youth because of the increase of anti-American sentiment.
Members of the audience appreciated Masters’ special attention to the international community’s idea of the United States.
“I enjoyed his ability to give global perspective on the perception of the United States and its foreign policy from a valuable, but often underrepresented, viewpoint,” said Jacob Mirsky’08.
Professor of Religion Peter Gottschalk expanded on differing perspectives across the world through reference to surveys compiled by the Office of Research in the U.S. Department of State. The surveys, which measured opinions of the United States, show a decline in U.S. popularity in a number of countries, including Canada, Britain, Morocco, Pakistan, and Turkey. According to Gottschalk, the statistics showed that even among traditional American allies, the post-9/11 policies of the Bush administration have negatively affected views of the United States abroad.
Seeing the politicization of 9/11 is particularly difficult for those who lost friends and family in the attacks, according to Len Burman’75. Burman is a member of Our Voices Together, a non-profit, non-partisan organization established by people whose loved ones were killed on 9/11. Their mission is to create change through service and philanthropy instead of political and military action against the enemy.
Burman explained why he believes it is easier for average Americans to desire the latter.
“Every two years we’re terrified into thinking that if we vote for the other guy, there will be planes flying into our neighborhoods,” Burman said.
Earlier in the day, students gathered in Memorial Chapel to hear professors and students recite their personal thoughts, experiences, and poetry. The readings explored their individual connections to the attacks, as well as that of American society as a whole.
The participants included Associate Professor of History and College of Letters Ethan Kleinberg, Assistant Professor of English Elizabeth Willis, Emeritus Professor of Psychology Karl Scheibe, Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins, Rabbi David Leipziger Teva, Jason Harris ’09, and Marc Arena ’07.
“I didn’t think there were enough people,” said Emily Greenhouse ’08. “I was disappointed with the student turnout. I thought the professors were very eloquent, and I was very moved by Marc Arena. I went to high school with Marc, so I could share some of his emotions. I really liked the poems that were selected. I like that they weren’t directly about September 11.”
Many of the speakers chose to recite poetry they felt reflected an important aspect of the legacy of 9/11, selecting such pieces as “Choose Something Like a Star” by Robert Frost and an excerpt from the work of Walt Whitman. The Frost poem, read by Scheibe, was intended to respond to what he perceived as America’s disorientation since 9/11.
“It’s very difficult for me to speak about 9/11 or feel that I have the right to say anything about it or share anything,” said Arena, who read two of his poems—one written the day of 9/11 and the other just a few days ago.
Others chose to speak directly, without reference to poetry, about their thoughts and memories of Sept. 11.
“That morning I went to school with a sour feeling in my belly,” Harris said, recounting his experience hearing about the attacks at school in Connecticut and learning his uncle had left work at the Pentagon just before it was hit.
Kleinberg stressed his uneasiness with the commemoration of an event as politically sensitive as 9/11 and his desire to avoid “nationalistic” or “jingoistic” memorials. He related his experience teaching his first class at the University the morning of the attacks and the critical discussion that followed. The students, he said, concluded that day that it was too easy to dismiss such violence as insane or evil, rather than acknowledge it does have a calculated end.
“The way to honor those—I hate the word ‘victims’—the ones who perished is to do better and examine our own complicity,” he said.
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