9/11 One Year Later
Nannerl O. Keohane
The following message was sent Tuesday by e-mail to more than 100,000 members of the Duke community.
All over the country, people are marking September 11 in their own way--some with grief, some
with anger, some with fellowship and talk, others with silence and solitude. Last year, when I
sent an e-mail to the 100,000-plus Duke University community sharing the news of our lost
alumni and the ways we were trying to cope, many of you wrote back touchingly. That dialogue
struck a chord, brought us together, and helped inform the course of your university. As we look
back now, I want to share my reflections on the first anniversary of the attacks.
Everyone thought our ordinary lives would be changed forever. It is true that a sword of
Damocles dangles over our nation, and a shadow over our thoughts. Yet in most ways, life has
gone on surprisingly much in the same vein, far more than we could have hoped or predicted.
Some things really have changed: for most of us, both family and fellowship are even higher
priorities. Poetry and music are more fraught with meaning and carry deeper relevance.
Perhaps for that reason, the most profound elegy on September 11 at Duke will be the simplest:
the ringing of the Chapel carillon. One chime at 8:46 a.m., for the first plane that struck; at 9:03,
for the second; at 9:43, for the one that hit the Pentagon; at 9:50, when the south tower collapsed
in New York; at 10:10, when the third plane went down in Pennsylvania; and at 10:28, when the
north tower fell. It is hard for me to imagine that anyone crossing the quad, or working or
studying within earshot of the Chapel (as my office is) will be able to hold back a tear when we
hear those solitary chimes.
I fervently hope that 9/11 this year will be a day of light, not another day of darkness. Some of
that light emanates from the careful talking and deep listening, the teaching and research, the
analyses and arguments that have surfaced at Duke and in countless other place in the last year.
As debates continue to rage among newspaper editors, in Washington, and in virtually every
world capital, universities like Duke must be places to probe more deeply than the simplistic
dichotomies of hawk or dove, conservative or liberal, good and evil, to ask the tough questions.
What are the implications of 9/11 for America's role in the world? How will the heroism of
firefighters and police in New York, and the passengers on United flight 93, help shape
Americans' attitudes toward public service and civic engagement? How can individual
Americans be both good citizens of our country and also sensitive to the reactions of fellow
human beings around the world who lead less privileged lives than our own?
Asking hard questions is what universities do, and the process can be messy and controversial.
But the skeptical yet civil exchange of ideas that has characterized these discussions at Duke is
democracy writ small. We need to value, and protect, those conversations, arguments,
ponderings.
If ever there were a time when our leaders needed to be able to turn to reliable experts, it is now,
and Duke faculty of all persuasions have been there for them. Our students struggle with those
same questions, and our faculty are here for them as well--not to hand out easy answers, but to
help them think. I hope those young scholars will themselves be part of unexpected, and
unexpectedly useful, solutions.
The events of September 11 engendered wide discussion on campus, with a broad range of views
expressed from this country and abroad. We hosted speakers from the CIA and other
government officials associated with the war on terrorism, as well as dissenting voices. Our
students' understanding of many complex issues--domestic and international--has been enriched
both by the intellectual effervescence of the dialogue and the widely divergent viewpoints
expressed.
This Wednesday, we will remember the six Duke alumni who died in the attacks, and the tens of
thousands who were affected by those horrific events. More than fifteen memorial events have
been planned across campus, including six religious services, a student-organized ceremony on
the Chapel steps at noon, a public policy symposium, a political science panel on 9/11 and world
politics, a blood drive, a medical psychology conference, a legal forum, and an art exhibit. These
plans arose spontaneously from the desires of students, faculty, and staff to mark the date, salve
wounds, seek closure, vent, understand, persuade--or just to be together at a time of emotional
vulnerability.
At 11:00 a.m., the carillon will toll six more times, and in a simple ceremony six magnolias will
be planted in a memorial grove near the West-Edens Link, new residence halls which connect the
main West Campus with Edens Quad. We chose the location because it is open to new traditions
and ceremony, heavily traveled, a place where students will notice and remember for a long, long
time; and because the presence of those same students constitutes America's greatest source of
hope. May they take root and grow strong.
One lesson of September 11 is the urgency of better communication networks. We have
launched a new set of services called eDuke [http://eduke.duke.edu/subscribe] which are free for
the asking. We have also established a 9/11 website [http://today.duke.edu/showcase/911site]
that demonstrates how we are beginning to use electronic communication more skillfully to keep
in touch with each other and with friends across the globe.
Let me leave you with a new word I learned this year: baraka. In Arabic, it means a gift of
spiritual energy that can be used for everyday purposes. Something like grace, something like
the Hebrew "baruch" (an etymological relative), baraka is a kind of divine electricity that drives,
for example, the utterances of a great teacher. In the words of poet Robert Graves, the blessing
of baraka also "attaches itself to buildings or objects after years of loving use by noble-hearted
people."
The Duke Chapel emanates baraka, and Duke people at their best receive and transmit baraka
freely and without self-consciousness. The collective baraka of our community, in the widest
sense of that word, makes this great university what it is. Thank you for being one of us.
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