A few of the presenters and some of their remarks:
Ananda Abeysekara, assistant professor
in religious studies, has expertise in Asian religions, religion
and nationalism, violence, and religion. He said, “As someone
from Sri Lanka, I have experienced terrorism. In America now, we
need to take the opportunity to think critically about nations,
nation states, religion, and democracy. We need to fashion a criticism
that is different from mainstream, hegemonic thinking.” He
explained later that nationalism is a hegemonic type of thinking.
“A hegemonic point of view wants to produce a single identify
at the expense of different states of being. Hegemonic thinking
erases difference. It forecloses belonging by all people.”
Douglas Borer, assistant professor
of political science and scholar of international relations, said,
“I am uncomfortable with the separation of the Taliban and
Osama bin Laden’s Al Qua’ida. I don’t think they
can be separated. You can’t have a war against the terrorists
without having a war against the Taliban. Terrorism and violence
and politics are intertwined throughout history. This is not a new
kind of war. It’s an old kind of war.”
John Boyer, instructor in geography,
specializes in world regions and physical geography. He said, “How
did we get to be ‘the greatest nation on earth’? The oceans
kept others away, including our colonial masters. What has happened
to this prom queen of a nation? Our advantageous position of physical
isolation has now disappeared, due to globalization. Terrorism has
demonstrated that communication, transportation, globalization are
two-way roads. What has the event meant to the rest of the world?
The alignment of allies and enemies has changed.”
David Forman-Barzilai, director of Judaic studies, is a scholar of political
philosophy and the political history of Israel. He said, “There
is a feeling that we are all at the same level of ignorance or inability
to provide insight. ... I have been teaching about the holocaust
for seven years, to understand historical events so we can be wiser.
Unfortunately we created an environment that was an illusion. What
message was written on the wall that we refused to recognize?”
William L. Ochsenwald, professor
of history, authority on the history of the Middle East, Islam,
the Ottoman Empire, modern Arab history, and the contemporary Middle
East, is author of Religion, Economy, and State in Ottoman-Arab
History (1998). He said, “There are 1.2 billion Muslims. There
are going to be a wide variety of opinions. Over 1,400 years, Islam
has expressed itself in a wide variety of ways . ... It would
be useful to define what victory might be; what the goals of the
United States ought to be. An eternal quest to squash terrorism
is unrealistic. ... We must address the lack of basic information
about world events. Prejudice against and by Islam must also be
addressed.”
Maria Papadakis is associate professor
of urban affairs and planning. She said, “Terrorism is anarchy.
We should hold nation states responsible for the actions of their
citizens. ... When asked if they are willing to give up civil
liberties, 60 to 70 percent of American citizens have said yes.
That’s a glib answer.” She expanded on that point later,
saying, “The loss of civil liberties has the greatest implications
for people of color by raising racial profiling to new levels.”
Edward Weisband is the Edward
S. Diggs endowed professor of political science. His 11 books include
studies of the conduct of American foreign economic policy in promoting
democracy and international development. He is a senior consultant
to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the International
Institute of Human Rights, among others. He talked about how the
American culture differs from that of the assassins.
During
the weeks following September 11, Virginia Tech scholars from different
fields gave both impromptu and organized talks, speaking individually
to classes and clubs, and in panels to gatherings from campus and
the surrounding community as they tried to provide some perspective
and answer questions. “Why?” was asked at every gathering
I attended. And people of all ages expressed concern for America and
for the innocent citizens of Afghanistan.
The following are responses to only four of many questions:
Q. What was Osama bin Laden’s aim?
Ochsenwald: He wants to eliminate the US presence from Saudi Arabia, decrease American involvement in the Middle East, and end the cultural influence of the United States. In the longer run, there is more beneath the surface. Complete withdrawal of the United States from the Mid East would not satisfy him. . . . . Bin Laden does NOT represent the world’s
1.2 billion Muslims.
Borer: Bin Laden wants control of Saudi Arabia, the site of many holy places. Longer term, he wants to spread his interpretation of Islam throughout the Middle East.
Forman-Barzilai: The religious priority is not the nation-state. Bin Laden is an extreme
representative of one opinion. We have to learn what the other opinions
are, and build a bridge, even if it takes the next 100 years to do
it.
Abeysekara: When members of Congress sang “God Bless America” on the
capitol steps, I wondered whether the government was playing into
the hands of the terrorists by depicting a nation under one god. .
. . America consists of multiple faiths. Being an American is a multiple
form of being. (He added later:) Unity is not necessarily bad, but
unity cannot be engineered at the cost of erasing difference. That
this nation embodies differences must be brought to the foreground.
Different ways of being do not produce easy targets to be attacked.
Q. Why hasn’t bin Laden claimed responsibility?
Borer: Bin Laden takes responsibility before an attack. He tells a journalist,
“Something will happen.” It creates some mystique. His audience
is people who he wants to adopt his world view. He knows there will
be an outcry, “What is the evidence?” He is not interested
in playing by our rules.
Forman-Barzilai: Who ever needs to know, does know. He doesn’t need to use the
act to recruit or raise funds. He wants to create a pure act of violence
and terror.
Q. What are the questions that American citizens
should be asking? What are the moral and ethical issues?
Forman-Barzilai: Democracy must defend its own core. We know that democracy is fragile;
it has its vulnerabilities. Dictators have come to power through democratic
elections. In the last 10 years, the United States has become the
center for training terrorists. Democracy has been used and abused.
Other issues are to protect our values of diversity and openness.
Borer: What are you willing to sacrifice? What are the roots of terrorism?
Most of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world are poor, but they produce
goods and services. Are you willing to pay a higher price for those
goods so they can have a higher standard of living? (Speaking on a
separate occasion, he added:) In Pakistan, there are children who
are lucky to get one meal a day. The private religious schools take
in those children and give them the only love and attention they get.
These schools are run by the Taliban. Are you willing to spend more
foreign aid to build schools to compete with the private religious
schools? Americans spend less than a $1 of their taxes on foreign
aid. This “war on terrorism” will cost more than that.
Borer: My greatest worry is giving more power to the CIA for covert operations,
which may further aggravate an already tense situation.
Weisband: I don’t think we can say that there is no need for new policies.
The first responsibility for our government is to protect our people
and homeland. There are consequences to this attack and our ability
to deter future attacks. The war/conflict will be fought in part in
secret. There will be a lot of things we will not know. We have to
think how accountability can be achieved. There will be loss of privacy.
We may have to carry ID cards. ... The United States will incur
all sorts of political debts. We have to draw lines in a different
way. Forget Tibet. The United States will not confront China on Tibet
. ... or Taiwan. The world has changed because the political center
of gravity has changed.
Q.
Can we go after the Taliban in Afghanistan without hurting innocent
people?
Ochsenwald: We can support the Northern Alliance, although they are an unsavory
group themselves. We can split the Taliban. We can talk to the Iranians.
There are a lot of far-fetched scenarios that MIGHT reduce punishment
of people who shouldn’t be punished.
Borer: The international coalition needs to form in the UN.
Forman-Barzilai: In the past century, major conflicts have gone on for 50 or 60 years.
If we take a short-term, more aggressive approach, we might do things
we will regret and neglect our values. So, a solution might be to
take a long-term approach.
Weisband:
(in a later interview): We are all innocent. Seven million people
face famine in Afghanistan on account of the Taliban regime. The brutalization
of their own people is a crime against humanity.
Borer: The Afghan people are already collateral damage of the Taliban. The
Taliban has created a mythical state — a version of Islam that
never existed. I agree with Dr. Weisband. There are different philosophical
roots that are truly hostile to what I believe in. A war on terrorism,
the CIA, and covert acts are not going to get to the root of the problem.
As Dr. Papadakis said, in international relations, states are responsible
for the actions for their citizens. The people who perpetuated this
act are not freelance wackos. An actual war might happen and people
I know will get killed. ... It may be that the people of Afghanistan
are going to suffer just as the people in Japan suffered at the end
of the second world war. But, if the Taliban world view is not dealt
with, the war on terrorism will still be going on in 20 years, and
it will be worse.
