Forgetting To Remeber

Late Sunday morning, early in my rainy drive back to Harvard from a weekend with my family in New Jersey, I saw the New York skyline smudged gray against the charcoal sky. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were, of course, not there. And, at first, their absence didn’t register.

It was nothing at all like my first trip on the New Jersey Turnpike after Sept. 11, 2001 when the gaping hole at the tip of Manhattan Island caused me to involuntarily gasp for air. No, last weekend, my first thought of the World Trade Center was when I realized in western Connecticut that I hadn’t thought about its towers at all while looking across the Hudson at Manhattan. I felt guilty, of course. (All the way to Hartford, in fact, when hunger took over.) On closer reflection, however, I’m not really sure whether I should have felt ashamed or not.

I know that as long as I have my wits about me I won’t forget that perfect blue September registration day my sophomore year. I won’t forget lying in bed and hearing Howard Stern interrupt his Pamela Anderson anecdote to say that something dreadful had happened. I won’t forget immediately calling my blockmates to have them come up to my room and watch the towers collapse in on themselves in the most horrifyingly stunning display in television history. I won’t forget rushing to The Crimson, thinking that I could do my piece for my country by voting for an editorial position (banally) condemning the attacks and (stupidly) urging that the towers be rebuilt as soon as possible exactly as they had been the day before. On the other hand, that wrenching day was only just over two years ago, and I hardly ever think of it now without significant prompting.

In his Oval Office address to the nation following the attacks, President Bush spoke of a “quiet, unyielding anger” toward the people who could have done such a thing. I felt that anger, as we all did. But over the coming days and weeks, it was instead a “quiet, unyielding sadness” that seemed to hang over Harvard Yard. We continued to go to class, we continued to go out for coffee, we continued to put in long hours at our extracurriculars. But, perhaps for the first time, you could sense the undergraduate population as a whole was wondering if there was any point to the Harvard rat race, if what we were doing here was not so important, after all.

Now, unsurprisingly, all of those emotions have faded—and that development is as reasonable as it was inevitable. There is no way that a society can function effectively while its members sleepwalk through life, terrified about their prospects for survival and, in any case, worrying that much of their existence is shallow and vacuous. Harvard students have, of course, protested—or supported—the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, even those who are less politically active have not (and could not have) shut themselves off entirely from following the so-called “War on Terrorism.” But, for the most part, we have now returned almost entirely to the pre-Sept. 11 world, where our main concerns are response papers and unit tests, drinking and dating. We know terrorism is out there—and, as the name cunningly suggests, it is very terrifying indeed—but it’s just not something that most Harvard undergraduates feel we have the time or inclination to fixate on right now.

Please don’t get me wrong: I’ll opt for watching the NFL over criticizing the CIA, any day. It is interesting, however, how quickly and totally we have moved on. Sure, we’ll remember the attacks on Sept. 11 itself, aided by nauseatingly glossy, sanitized television documentaries. But should we feel guilty for forgetting it in our everyday lives? Should we be thinking about what TV grandly styled the “Attack on America” while we’re en route to class or driving along the New Jersey Turnpike. Is Sept. 11, 2001 even fair game for a column in October 2003?

It is worthwhile to look back at old issues of The Crimson from the early 1950s. The subject matter of the most prominently placed articles suggests that Harvard students at that time were preoccupied with the threat of nuclear annihilation. Nonetheless, a rather more thorough examination of those newspapers shows that those same students were also focused on a day-to-day level with going to football games, dances and, every now and then, their classes. I guess that’s just the way it is for most of us today. Still, it is incredibly upsetting to think that it will take another catastrophic attack to rouse us again from our complicit naïveté. In that vein, let’s take a quick quiz. What work do you have due for tomorrow? What are your plans for the weekend? What level is the terror alert at right now?

The answer (to the third) question is that the current threat level is “yellow,” or “elevated.” Obviously I had to cheat and look it up on the Department of Homeland Security website. In any case, I have no idea what “yellow” means in practice. And while I really ought to find out, I have to run. You see, I’m meeting someone for lunch.

Anthony S.A. Freinberg ’04 is a history concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.