The Lawrence community came together at the steps in front of Main Hall on the morning of September 11, 2002, for a simple observance of the one-year anniversary of the terrorist acts in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.
President Warch called together the campus community to share in a moment of reflection and remembrance — to reflect on the meaning of that defining moment in our lives and to honor the memory of those who perished and those who sacrificed in service of their fellow citizens.
Below is President Warch's message to the Lawrence community, followed by history professor Jerald Podair's remarks on the meaning of September 11, delivered on the same occasion.
President Richard Warch
We all remember where we were on September 11, 2001. I was in my office, getting ready to drive to Chicago right after going over to the library to meet with the gentleman whose gift had enabled us to renovate the first floor. I heard the news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, walked over to the Union, and watched in disbelieving shock as the tragedy multiplied and cascaded to a horrific end. The moment was bewildering, senseless, tragic. Members of the community gathered in silent grief that morning, and again in the following days, numb with shock but knowing that this was a time for us to stand together.
We gather here a year later, perhaps still bewildered, still in shock as we recall that day. Many of us have probably also dreaded this day, wondering if the United States would experience another act of terrorism, as the arrests last week in Germany suggested pointedly could be the case. But this morning, we mourn for those who were killed in the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania and for their families and loved ones whose grief is beyond imagining. In the subsequent hours, days, weeks, and months during the past year, we also came to understand with deepening appreciation and gratitude those men and women who gave of themselves — some with their lives — in rescue efforts. Out of the chaos and confusion of the disaster emerged stronger and deeper bonds within our community, across the nation, and indeed around the world. We will forever remember that day and its aftermath, and will probably mark this day in some form or fashion for the rest of our lives. September 11 will stand with December 7 as a day to remember with sadness, pride, and, no doubt, with anger.
This brief moment together is but one of thousands that will take place today, both here and abroad, and is one of more than 50 being held in the Fox Valley and surrounding communities. At the World Trade Center site in New York this morning, in a particularly moving tribute, former mayor Rudolph Guiliani and others read the names of those killed a year ago. So, as we stand in solidarity with one another at Lawrence, we should know too that we are symbolically standing with millions of others across the land and around the world. This year, President Bush has declared September 11 as "Patriot Day," though whether it will become a national holiday (hardly the right inspiration for a holiday, I suspect) is not yet clear. Whatever we name it, the day itself has undoubtedly transformed us in ways we cannot yet fully comprehend. Indeed, it is what has transpired in the aftermath of September 11 — the sense of vulnerability, the realization that there are those who hate America and what it stands for, the efforts to eradicate Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, the commitment to rebuild Afghanistan, the attempt to cope with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to avoid a disaster in Kashmir, and now the professed purpose to rid the world of Saddam Hussein — that offer portents of how the world and our perceptions of and relations to the world have changed.
Another consequence of September 11 perhaps offers a more positive outlook. We have, for the most part, come to have a deeper and more grateful appreciation of democracy, freedom, liberty, and respect for individual rights. We have also come to learn more about the Arab and Muslim worlds and worldviews. To the extent that we basked in uncritical self-absorption with our own country and its traditions and worldview, to the extent that we possessed a kind of unthinking indifference to the rich complexity of the world in which we live, we have been disabused. We have, in short, come to place an even greater value on one of the aims of education, which is to make us informed citizens of both country and world so that we can better serve both.
At the end of the day, however, this is a time for remembrance and commemoration, both for those affected by September 11 and for the benefits of freedom we enjoy now with even greater gratitude. In Monday's edition of The New York Times, William Safire wrote that New York Governor George Pataki and others would recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at services commemorating September 11. We should harken to Lincoln's words, Safire wrote, because "now, as then, a national spirit rose from the ashes of destruction." I thought to end these remarks by reading that address, as Governor Pataki did several hours ago, so let us listen to it now and take to heart its expressions of dedication to our nation's principles and its resolve that our response to tragedy will lead to a recommitment to the values of freedom for which our nation stands.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from those honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Professor Jerald Podair
The 20th century has been called "The American Century." We now know that the
20th century ended on September 11, 2001, propelling America into a 21st century
filled with danger and uncertainty. The wars our nation fought in the 20th century
were against identifiable enemies — Germany, the Soviet Union, even North Vietnam.
But the war on terror, even more so than the Cold War, will be a "twilight struggle," fought
in the shadows, on many fronts, with ambiguous rules and an uncertain timeframe.
We do not know how this war will end. We do know, however, that it will be fought with ideas as well as with guns and bombs. For September 11 taught us that there are many in the world who despise the United States not only for what we ourselves would concede as our weaknesses — our history of racism, our record of imperialism, our culture of materialism — but for what we view as our strengths — our traditions of democracy, secularism, and respect for individual rights.
September 11 showed us that we are hated for the values we are most proud of and that we will have to defend these values as resolutely in the coming years as we do our airports, skyscrapers, and monuments. If we cannot do this, we will lose the war on terror even if we prevail militarily everywhere in the world. The only way America can win a war against terror is to win the war of ideas and values that accompanies it.
But for now, as we look to make sense of September 11 one year later, it may be that we are still too close to it. September 11, 2001, was not the bloodiest day in American history. That sad distinction belongs to another day in September, September 17, 1862, when some 6,400 Americans, from the North and South, died at the Battle of Antietam. The Civil War historian James McPherson has just published a book on the battle, and he writes about its sheer horror in terms reminiscent of our own terrible day in September.
As we do now, Americans struggled to find meaning in Antietam's carnage. But it was only over time that that meaning became clear. We now know that Antietam led to the emancipation of four million slaves, the preservation of the United States as a nation, and, ultimately, the "new birth of freedom" — for all Americans — that Lincoln envisioned at Gettysburg.
One year on is too early to fully understand September 11, 2001, just as it was for our ancestors in the wake of Antietam. We can only hope that, as for Antietam's heirs, America will emerge from our travail in the 21st century as a nation worthy of Lincoln's words: "the last, best hope of earth."