I was going into work late the morning of 9/11. So, with me at work in the home office and the television on in the den in the next room, I saw the aftermath of the first hit. I saw the second in its entirety.
Then hurried to work
Then I hurried in to work at the University of Texas-Austin because I knew there would be lots to do, extra security and a building full of students covering local angles for The Daily Texan and student television.
Class that afternoon
The Texas Student Media staff were fine, didn’t need me at all as it turned out. And they did a great job of covering campus reaction and threats to Muslim students on campus. But it also so happened the Freshman Seminar I team taught with the remarkable Dr. Peggy Kruger met that day. We sent the students out in groups to assess local reaction. It was shocking how many students along “the drag” adjoining campus didn’t know of the day’s events. But many did. It was a great exercise for the seminar, aptly named “The Media and You.”
Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing
9/11 is such a milestone in American history that everyone who was alive then knows where they were and what they were doing when the planes hit. They recall the sadness for those trapped. They recall fear of more attacks.
Robert Jensen and the UT president
A progressive UT journalism professor, Robert Jensen, wrote an opinion piece that was run by the Houston Chronicle saying the U.S. had done its share of violent acts. He made good points. But not in the eyes of UT President Larry Faulkner, who called Jensen “a fountain of undiluted foolishness on issues of public policy.” That led to disgruntlement inside and outside the College of Communication.
I bring that up because…
The point of bringing that up is: Have we learned anything? How did 9/11 change us?
20-year war
The attacks led us to an unproductive 20-year war that cost more than 6,000 American lives — 2,448 service members and 3,846 contractors. It seems to me it has made the country less open to immigration, especially from Muslim nations. It may have led to bias against Muslims who had already been here for generations.
Capitol building
And while airplane passengers in Pennsylvania gave their own lives to keep a plane from smashing into the Capitol, American terrorists stormed the same building just last January 6. Now are we safe from our own people?
Wish you were here, Dad
This is all a long way from Gallatin, MO, and my dad’s weekly newspaper. But as someone who read the Congressional Record daily, as well as four other daily newspapers, I’d like to hear his take on this momentous anniversary.
Division and other issues
The country’s divisiveness isn’t causing buildings to collapse on the people inside. But it is creating a collapse of other sorts in the values of the democracy that I hope most hold dear. We all lost something on 9/11. Things will never be the same.