Panelists call for reflection, debate, responsible action

By Linda Grace-Kobas

Various dimensions of the aftermath of last year's terrorist attacks were explored in five faculty panels held each day last week in Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall.

Cornellians must "bring the best intelligence we can to the issues raised by Sept. 11," President Hunter Rawlings said as he introduced the panel titled "Reflections on 9/11" on Sept. 11.

Professors Michele Moody-Adams and Walter LaFeber, right, take part in the Sept. 11 panel discussion "Reflections on 9/11." Charles Harrington/University Photography

The terrorist attacks were sui generis, declared Michele Moody-Adams, the Hutchinson Professor of Philosophy and director of the Program in Ethics and Public Life. Even if there are further terrorist attacks, it is "unimaginable that any other event could affect us as 9/11 did," she said.

For the past year, Americans have been engaged, she said, in many "rituals of grief and remembrance," in an attempt to "transform great sorrow into profound hope." But she deplored the media's "incessant and unreflective replay" of the collapse of the Twin Towers during the past year, saying it diminishes the suffering of lost loved ones when repetition turns that suffering into a narrative devoid of ritual or reflection.

Referring to Rawlings' opening remarks in which he emphasized Cornell's commitment to "freedom with responsibility," Shawkat M. Toorawa, assistant professor of Arabic literature and Islamic studies, said he condemns actions that are based on "response without responsibility," whether those actions are taken by individuals or governments. "Reacting without responsibility leads to destruction," he said.

The most profound transformations that have occurred in the United States during the past year have been in foreign policy and civil liberties, said Walter F. LaFeber, the Marie Underwood Noll Professor of American History.

With the growing U.S. military presence in Central Asia and the Middle East, we now have a formal American empire, a concept "we are only beginning to understand," LaFeber said, warning that "there is no steady state," as an empire must always either expand or contract. "The United States has never been very good at nation building," he said, although "we had no choice but to try to destroy terrorism" in Afghanistan. The United States has been successful only when it acted in concert with other nations, he added.

LaFeber noted that the French statesman Alexis deToqueville, in his commentaries on American life, wondered whether Americans would trade liberty for security in times of war. Current homeland security measures will put the test to that question, he remarked.

During the question-and-answer period, LaFeber responded to a question that many Americans are asking during the national debate over whether to go to war in Iraq: Can we compare our situation to that of the 1930s when, in hindsight, it would have been better to attack Hitler before he had a chance to start World War II?

"We've been overreacting against the 1930s for the past 60 years," he responded. America is now a "unipolar empire" in a very different world, he said.

Moody-Adams seemed to summarize the three presentations by remarking that the most fitting tribute to those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, "would be for all Americans to play a more active part in the national debate on how to combat terrorism."