Ten years ago today, the World Trade Centre twin towers were attacked and fell, with terrible loss of life.
Like most people, I guess, I can remember exactly where I was during the attacks – watching CNN in a high-rise hotel room in Kuala Lumpur, a one day stopover on the way back from Australia (conference, holiday) and New Zealand (conference) to the UK. Checking in just before 9 pm local time, I walked into the hotel room, stuck on the TV to catch up with the world – and there was the first tower burning. I am pretty sure I checked whether it was really CNN I was watching, to make sure I hadn’t got a movie, or a ‘doomsday what-if’ show by mistake. A few minutes later, while I watched, the second plane hit. I was still watching when the towers fell. I remember my father calling me from the UK on my mobile. “Are you watching this?” Who could turn it off?
A couple of weeks later I wrote the following to run in Physiology News, which we had recently re-vamped to add an Editorial column, among other things. We debated whether to say anything about the attacks – after all, so much had been said by then. But somehow we felt something had to go in. So here it is, exactly as it ran then.
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A personal view – Science and World Events
In this first issue of the renamed Physiology News we report on the IUPS meeting, where over two thousand physiologists and other scientists from related disciplines gathered for “our” four-yearly conference. The delegates came from all around the world to celebrate our communal enterprise – the revealing of more about how living organisms, including man, work. As scientists investigating the natural world at the start of the new millennium we are privileged to be part of a truly international undertaking.
Less than two weeks after the end of the IUPS meeting, perhaps while some members of the Society were still abroad or making their way home, came the terrible events of September 11th. Perhaps many of us thought of people we know in New York or Washington, or contacted our friends there to check that they were safe. The events emphasise the fragility of the international systems of travel and commerce on which we depend.
As scientists we have the chance, not given to many people, to travel widely in the world, and to work with people from many countries and cultures. During my twenty years working in science I have shared lab and office space with scientists from all the continents of the world, from both rich and poor countries. I remember one lab in the USA where a large map on the wall indicated the countries of origin of the people working there, from Japan to Bangladesh, from India to Iran, from Britain to Russia to South Africa, and many others apart from the USA. This experience is hardly unique. We are privileged to work with our colleagues from other countries, discuss things in the common language of science, and to learn something about them and their cultures.
If this kind of experience teaches us anything, it must be that people the world over seek basically the same things: the happiness of those that are close to them, work from which they can take some satisfaction, a better life for their families. It doesn’t seem so very complicated.
However, in today’s world, not everyone is as lucky as we scientists. Science is international – that is one of its great strengths. It shows how a worldwide community can focus on a common goal, and draw strength from its diversity. As the world absorbs the horror of September 11th and its aftermath, we can only hope that, one day, the same will be true in all spheres of human endeavour. We can also hope that the international scientific community will do its part in helping to break down the cultural barriers.
That’s a nice editorial piece, Austin. Thanks for re-running it today.
Very nice, Austin. I wish I could say that we scientists in the US succeeded in breaking down some of the cultural barriers, but in the months and years immediately following September 11, 2001, additional barriers to international exchange in science were raised. I can remember a few meetings at which our European colleagues were absent, due to new restrictions on entering the US. A couple of Middle Eastern physicians in the medical center were arrested (not in the usual sense, but can’t think of a better term) and “disappeared” for days or weeks, and an Egyptian postdoc begged me not to think of him as a terrorist. A colleague who was collaborating with some Iranian neuroscientists was subjected to investigations and censorship of his e-mail correspondence. For Americans, international scientific exchange has returned to much of its pre-9/11 openness, but things were pretty dire and restrictive for awhile.
I was grading anatomy exams when the WTC twin towers were attacked; back then, the faculty and TAs graded the practical exams together in the anatomy labs, where there are TVs (for showing dissection videos). My technician’s son and his family lived in NYC at the time, and her grandson, who I think was only 13 or so at the time, had the presence of mind to walk home from school – of course all the usual public transport had stopped.
In the summer of 2001 we’d moved to a part of east London where we could send the minor Croxii to a Jewish primary school – one of only two non-Orthodox Jewish primaries in the country. Crox Minor (then aged 3) had got a place in the afternoon kindergarten, and on 11 Sept I took the day off so I could play the proud Dad and take her to school after lunch. I did that, but the glow of Proud Dadness soon evaporated when I got home and found Mrs Crox with the lunchtime news on. She told me that a plane had hit the WTC. Must have been a light plane, I said. An accident. No, quoth she, it was an airliner. My expression of disbelief was met with uxorial insistence, and we were still arguing about it when the second plane hit. After that we were glued to the TV. The time came for me to collect Crox Minor from kindergarten. The mood at school was somber – everyone knew people in NYC. And, being Jews, we knew who was responsible. Security at school was very tight.
I remember being in a rather dull and lengthy planning meeting that morning, and apart from odd rumours of a light aircraft hitting the WTC, it wasn’t until all four planes had crashed and the two towers had fallen that we emerged to hear the full and frankly unbelievable revelations.
My principle thought at the time, that persists today, was utter bafflement at the fact that there are people out there who must evidently have decided that this was in some way ‘a good thing to do’.
Thanks all
This was actually the first editorial comment of any kind I ever wrote, and I was worried at the time that it might come over as too corny. I remember sending it to my old boss from the NIH to ask him what he thought. “Not corny.” he emailed back. “Heartfelt”. I owe him one for that.
No surprise that disbelief, along with revulsion, seems to have been the main feeling for all of us. I am reminded of what my parents told me about shock and utter disbelief being their main reaction to John Kennedy’s assassination. I mention that because, when I was growing up, that was the event for which they and their friends could all recall where they were when they heard, like for 9/11.
Re Kristi’s comment, I guess what scientists can do is what I imagine she and her colleagues did – assure their Middle Eastern colleagues that they did not associate them with the events of 9/11, and argue where possible for scientific exchange and for not closing off scientific links to any of the countries of the Middle East – unless the country were under UN sanctions, like Iraq. You can’t do much, but you do what you can.
I was uneasy with all the extra travel security after 9/11 (mainly because it was hard to see how a lot of it would actually help), and far more so with stuff like restricting or even abrogating civil liberties and setting up extra-judicial jails. Reaction and retaliation was inevitable, but as for all that has come after… Well, not the place to get into a long debate on “The War on Terror’, though as I was no fan of either Dubya or Blair you can probably guess where I would stand.
As for the suicide attackers, what can you say? As Steve M says, it is hard to get your head around what would drive anyone to commit such a hideous act of premeditated mass murder. I remember watching quite a lot of Robert Baer’s documentary history The Cult of the Suicide Bomber, and even then I still couldn’t ‘compute’ it, though watching did make me utterly depressed.
I was in the middle of writing my PhD thesis and was completely unaware of what had happened until some hours after it was all over.
I did most of my drafting in the library at work, so as to still have tea and lunch breaks with my friends, and only did my typing and editing at home. But on that one particular day I was proofing two hard copy chapters, and decided to do it all from home. I didn’t have any internet connection at home, didn’t turn the TV or radio on all day, no-one called, and it wasn’t until my rather shell-shocked flatmate came home at about 9pm that I had any idea that anything was happening. Talking to people at the time, it seemed that hearing everything that had happened all in one go hit me harder than for people who watched it unfold in real time, but they all seemed to have been much more afraid than I was, having absolutely no idea while events were still unfolding of how many planes were involved in how many countries, if London or other British cities (I was in Glasgow at the time) were targets, and when it would all end.
My cousin had just moved to NYC, and all his parents knew was that he had three job interviews in Manhattan that day, starting very early, all at big financial institutions – but they didn’t know which ones. No-one could reach him for well over 36 hours, when he finally found a functional pay phone. If you can believe this, he was walking home late that night and got MUGGED. In Manhattan, on 9-11, in his first few weeks in the city. They took his wallet, his phone, and his transit pass. Un-be-f&*%ing-lievable.