Professors provide insight to attack

For Associate Professor of History David Pace, the horror of Tuesday's events hit especially close to home.\nUpon hearing of Tuesday's attack on New York City's World Trade Center, his thoughts immediately turned to his daughter, who lives a mere two blocks away from the eye of the storm.\nHis daughter is fine, he reports -- yet he said he fears the shaken nation may not be. \nPace equated Tuesday's events to the assassination of John F. Kennedy -- an event of international intrigue evoking an unprecedented outpouring of emotion and public sentiment.\nAnd, much like the Kennedy murder, Tuesday's attack has "changed the shape of our universe." Suddenly, Pace said, things that never before seemed possible are challenging ideals at the very crux of American foreign security.\n"Day to day, we have some sense of what is expected to happen," Pace said. "Then something like this happens and we realize events and possibilities we hadn't thought of before."\nLike Pace, other IU professors spent much of Tuesday speculating what the attacks that left the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon in Washington collapsed, will mean for the state of the nation and for U.S. citizens.\nA vulnerable nation\nTuesday's events evoked a multitude of conflicting emotions for Professor of Political Science Jeff Isaac. As a native New Yorker, he has family who live in New York, and knows people who work in the World Trade Center, Isaac wrote in an e-mail to his students, "I am as shaken as I have ever been in my 44 years."\n"Today is an awful day. The life of this country has been murderously disrupted," he said. "I cannot pretend that this has not happened, or go on as if we can simply do business as usual."\nIsaac said Americans often experience a false sense of security because the nation is an ocean apart from the traditional theaters of world war. With a direct attack to several locations on the U.S. mainland, that sense of security has been destroyed.\nIn light of yesterday's attack, Pace said, citizens are faced with questions to which no plausible answers exist. The result, he said, might manifest in explosive discriminatory reactions by embittered survivors, their families and Americans at large. \n"It goes back to the sense of betrayal we felt at Pearl Harbor," Pace said. "One form of dehumanization can also lead to another, and I worry about what those implications will be."\nIsaac deemed Tuesday's attacks a "Pearl Harbor for our own generation." \nHe said he doesn't believe the events will lead to world conflict but the subsequent trauma symbolizes a loss of innocence.\n"Beyond the specifics of our history, I think that these events signify a deep vulnerability that is central to our complex, post-industrial, globalized world," Isaac said. "We are incredibly reliant on others, all across the globe. Our daily lives are premised upon extraordinarily dense and fragile interrelationships. From the food we eat to the clothes we wear, to our manner of communication by phone and internet, to our manner of transportation by car or plane, to our manner of subsistence through the use of money, we rely on things beyond our immediate control. Our social world is built upon trust."\nSearching for answers\nAssociate Professor of Political Science Michael McGinnis described the attack as "well-organized, sophisticated...and truly unspeakable."\nHe expressed confidence in the government's ability to find the terrorists and said he feels some sort of retaliation will be initiated in the future, although it may be difficult to find the specific group responsible.\n"At this point, there are many false assertions, and we will have to wait until further investigations to make accurate assertions," McGinnis said. \nThe attacks were effective, McGinnis said, because they unexpectedly and simultaneously targeted some of the country's most vulnerable centers of political and social activity.\nMcGinnis speculated increased airline security and an overhaul of air traffic control systems will likely result from Tuesday's events. In addition, he expects urban centers such as Washington and New York City to substantially increase security efforts. \nBut Americans must be careful when targeting groups as potential targets.\n"It's important to hold off on any speculation right now because it's easy to misidentify the reasons or group behind this," McGinnis said. "Think about the Oklahoma City bombing; many misidentified that attack, in the beginning, as a result of Islamic terrorism."\nThe House Committee on Arms and Services debated this morning to deposit $800 million from plans to build a nuclear missile shield into anti-terrorism efforts -- clear indication, Pace claimed, of the government's commitment to strengthening foreign security.\nAssessing the Media Associate Professor of Telecommunications Herbert Terry was preparing dinner from his apartment in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he is currently conducting research, when he heard the initial report.\nWithout warning, CNN interrupted a routine World News report to cut to coverage of the crisis. \nStricken, Terry sat down at 8:07 p.m. -- 9:07 a.m. in Bloomington -- to write an e-mail to the faculty of the School of Journalism, citing a "need to just reach out to (my) national colleagues." As he wrote, he watched the second tower of the World Trade Center collapse. \nTerry said the independent Russian network NTV has interrupted usual programming with summaries gleaned from CNN coverage. \n"They seem to be playing it pretty straight -- no more speculation about Osama Bin Ladin than on CNN itself," Terry wrote. \nAt press time, Terry said he expected correspondence from the U.S. Embassy or State Department later in the evening advising Americans to take special care to avoid places usually associated with the U.S. and hangouts for U.S. expatriates.\nHe said he does not fear for his own safety; he realizes he'll be "up all night watching this and then to go work and teach tomorrow." \nHe said he expects his students at the American University in Kyrgyzstan will want to discuss the situation, a request he'll likely grant. \nProfessor of Journalism Owen Johnson felt one of the biggest difficulties confronting journalists in handling the story is access. "Usual" sources abstain from commenting until more information becomes available, and independent experts willing to discuss such issues are often hard to find.\n"The good journalists are being ingenious in finding ways to talk to people who were eyewitnesses or were drawn into the maelstrom around the three attacks," Johnson said. "I did find it strange when one journalist referred to the 'alleged terrorists,' bending over backwards, I guess, to avoid blaming anyone."\nStaff reporters Annie Gill, Jason Rutherford, Chris Ensminger and Rachel Kipp contributed to this story.