Last Friday, Sept. 11, marked the 25th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives in New York City and Washington, D.C. In commemoration of the event, The Phoenix reached out to longtime faculty members and reviewed archival documents to understand the Swarthmore community’s experience of the tragedy.
The Day of the Attacks
“I remember that the weather that day was absolutely glorious,” recalls William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Psychology Andrew Ward, “with a perfectly clear blue sky.”
A number of campus news articles from the days following the attacks note remarkably beautiful weather as well. It was a Tuesday morning; many students were in early lectures and seminars when the hijackings took place.
“9/11 was in the days before phones [were] everywhere at all times,” William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English Literature Peter Schmidt says. “I can’t remember precisely how word spread while morning classes were in session, but it did.”
As news of the hijackings proliferated through word of mouth, the magnitude of the attacks was not immediately clear. Centennial Professor of Computer Science Tia Newhall remembers:
“I was teaching a class when a student came in a little late and announced that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. She told us what she knew, which at that point seemed like a bad accident, and then I continued to teach my class. After my class ended, it was clear that something different, bigger, and scary was happening.”
Before long, Swarthmore’s campus was officially closed. Faculty and non-essential staff were sent home, while the Sharples dining hall, psychological services, and the offices of the college deans remained open to students. Television screens displaying news feeds were placed in the Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC) and McCabe Library.
“There was a huge [screen] in the LPAC’s main theater,” says Schmidt, “and the space was full of staff, faculty, students. The newscasts showed endless scenes of destruction intercut with interviews of survivors, first responders, and others. Most of those interviewed were covered in grayish silt that made them look like ghosts. They had trouble finding words and were clearly in shock.”
As the campus community gathered to watch the events unfold, students and faculty with loved ones in the affected areas attempted to reach them over the phone. For much of the day, limited cell service prevented these calls from connecting.
“The entire campus was quiet, subdued, sensitive,” said Ben Camp ’05 in a Phoenix article from the week of the attacks. “There was confusion; rumors and misinformation spread. Then everyone settled down. And stayed settled. And quiet. It was a different kind of campus.”
“I began to think about the … frantic, frightened [students with] families in New York and D.C. that will try to call all their relatives to find out if they are still alive,” Tsiri Agbenyega ’03 commented in the same article. “Some will find out that all their relatives are alive, others will find their relatives in hospitals, others will find their relatives dead, others will not find answers till the next day or perhaps after a number of days.”
As the campus community attempted to process the tragedy, the rules and rhythms of daily life at the college dissipated. That morning, Peggy Chan Professor of History Timothy Burke had been holding office hours from his home just off-campus in order to care for his infant daughter. He was watching for more news of the attacks on television when his first student arrived.
“The student had heard the news. We watched for about five minutes in silence, and I said that I thought perhaps there were more important things than talking about the paper that was due soon. The student agreed and left. I quickly emailed the other student who was going to come at 11:30 to cancel the appointment. The second tower came down shortly afterwards as I watched. A lot of the rest of the day was a blur.”
Ward, too, cancelled his appointments for the day: “I walked around the campus and took some comfort admiring its lush plantings, which looked beautiful and conveyed a sense of peace and calm on that otherwise horrific date.”
Elsewhere on campus, faith counselors led efforts to provide students with emotional support. A September 2001 Phoenix article by Matthew Fitting ’07 reports that Protestant religious advisor Pauline Allen opened her doors to the student body.
“Soon [Allen] was joined by many students,” Fitting writes. “She had dealt with some of them extensively in the past; some she’d never seen before. Many of her visitors just sat, staring. Others clasped their hands and squeezed their eyes shut. A few prayers were said aloud; there was mostly silence.”
Fitting reports that Allen and her colleagues dealt primarily with secular matters that day, attempting to contact students’ family members and connecting students with psychological support services.
“Most students I’ve spoken to have just wanted a space to talk in, to be heard,” commented Jewish life adviser Rachel Kobrin in Fitting’s article. “Most people have just really wanted to speak with a person they know will be there to listen.”
That evening, the college held a special collection in the meeting house on campus. Ward recalls that many students and faculty members were in attendance. A notable exception was Swarthmore College President Al Bloom, who was in New York City during the attacks and was unable to return to campus. Quoted in a September 2001 Phoenix article by Lillie Dremeaux ’04, Bloom described witnessing the incident from a 12th-floor apartment in lower Manhattan with a direct line of sight to the towers:
“I had rarely seen a day that beautiful. And juxtaposed against this was this huge fire-ball, with flames shooting out of the gaping hole in the tower … I heard my wife saying, ‘My God, my God, there’s another plane coming, there’s another plane coming … and it just hit!’ New York was — I’ve never seen it like that — there was a sense of ‘we’re all in this together’ and ‘the whole city is being attacked.’ People just started talking to whomever was next to them.”
It was not long before Bloom returned to Swarthmore, but he expressed his regret at his inability to attend the special collection on the day of the attacks.
“I was very sad to not have been able to be at the collection last night because of how much I treasure being part of this community when I’m looking for the kind of personal connections which I know were so intensely expressed … I feel deeply proud to be a member of a community that feels so profoundly the human loss and the societal and world implications of this crisis. I know that, as an educational community, we will do all we can to better understand how to create a world in which such events do not take place.”
Other members of the Swarthmore community were much farther from campus than Bloom. According to a Phoenix article written by Nicole Brunda ’04 in the week following the attacks, nearly 100 Swarthmore students were studying abroad when news of the hijackings reached the college. The college contacted the 94 students to ensure their safety; all were ultimately able to continue their studies as planned. In the days before the ubiquity of the internet, however, some students lacked access to information about the attacks altogether. Liz Brainard ’03, participating in a Kenya-based program at the time, could not be reached by friends, family members, and college administrators for weeks.
“Liz has no access to e-mail or phone,” said Elizabeth Lindsay ’02 in Brunda’s article, “and she only has one mail stop on Oct. 11. I don’t know if she knows about the World Trade Center events yet.”
Campus Reflects
In the days and weeks that followed, campus community members began to process the events intellectually as well as emotionally.
“I think we’ve all recognized that terrorist attacks were going to be part of our future,” said Richter Professor Emerita of Political Science Carol Nackenoff in a Phoenix article by Amanda Schneider ’02, “but it’s still staggering, the scope and the orchestration of this set of events. We have a sense of security that very few other peoples in the world have. Though the former World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings shattered that, this will really drive home that we are none of us secure.”
Students, too, voiced a range of opinions on the issue, sharing their hopes and fears for the aftermath of the attacks.
“What happened today is, of course, horrific,” commented Greg Jablonski ’02 in another article by Brunda. “But while emotionally jarring, what happened could not rationally have been unexpected … I hope that ultimately the lesson learned is that the best interests of the United States lie not in trying to mold the world into its own image, but rather in letting the world evolve as it may and then working to fit itself into whatever the world does become.”
Throughout September and October, the Opinions section of The Phoenix reflected highly polarized student sentiments about the possibility of American retaliation. Columns with headlines ranging from “We must channel reactive energy into something more constructive,” to “U.S. should not shrink before terrorism’s evil,” to “Swat intellectualism buries human emotion,” often engaged in direct conflict, calling out other student authors by name before taking their arguments to task.
Tensions came to a head as Swarthmore’s student body joined undergraduates across the country in rallying for peace in place of military action. Reports from the time and more recent testimonies confirm that the majority of Swarthmore students favored nonviolence, but a vocal minority was bolstered by the support of off-campus journalists and speakers who joined the rally.
According to another article by Dremeaux, Gil Spencer of The Delaware County Daily Times “placed those speakers who warned against global capitalism in the same category with ‘backward religious fanatics, die-hard communists, anarchists, [and] environmental kooks.’ He also referred to most of the open mic speakers as ‘a parade of Blame America First-ers who took their shots at our imperialistic government, our exploitative media, and our mean-spirited, intolerant, racist countrymen.’”
Meanwhile, Professor of Political Science Cynthia Halpern, quoted in the same piece, suggested that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s liberator.” Halpern encouraged universal solidarity, arguing that “if we can understand who we are, both as victims and oppressors, then we can begin to sort out everything and then we can start making decisions.”
Faculty and students expressed concerns about the consequences of an American public intent on revenge, both abroad and at home. Quoted in a Phoenix article written by Elana Rakoff ’06 in the week following the attack, Chirag Chotalia ’04 articulated a new sense of profound unease amongst communities of color in the wake of the attacks.
“My dad said, ‘Make sure you’re careful,’” she recalled at a campus-wide fireside chat. “And I was just going into Philadelphia.”
In his statement to The Phoenix this fall, Schmidt said that, at the time, he and other faculty members had discussed their worry that “the events would bring out the worst in this country toward ‘foreigners’ of almost all kinds, rekindling its ancient fires of hatred and paranoia. Sadly,” he writes, “our worst fears were not as bad as what actually occurred — and is still happening.”
25 years later, several professors The Phoenix contacted for comment reported that the event remained too painful to recall. On campus, the anniversary of the attacks came and went with little ceremony. A small exhibition in McCabe Library and a half-mast flag over Parrish Hall are the only signifiers of the campus’s memory of the event.
Below are the full statements of faculty members collected in September, 2026.
Peggy Chan Professor of History Timothy Burke
I was home on 9/11 in the faculty rental house that I live in once again at present. I was taking care of my eight-month old child. For that fall, I had decided to schedule office hours at my home so that I could do child care when I was not teaching. I had two students scheduled, one of whom was coming at 10am. My wife was working in Philadelphia at the time and had left on an early train because of a 9am meeting at work. Around 8:55 someone telephoned me — I think my mother, but I don’t remember for sure — and told me I should turn on the television. My daughter was fussy, so I was holding her. As I watched the news feed, they reported the second hit. I was still watching, my daughter asleep, when the first student arrived for office hours just after the first tower fell. The student had heard the news. We watched for about five minutes in silence, and I said that I thought perhaps there were more important things than talking about the paper that was due soon. The student agreed and left. I quickly emailed the other student who was going to come at 11:30 to cancel the appointment. The second tower came down shortly afterwards as I watched. A lot of the rest of the day was a blur. At the time I did not have a personal cellphone, but my wife and I talked on the landline and she agreed to make her way home. (She had to take a taxi, as the Septa trains had stopped. Her taxi had to go through West Philadelphia because I-95 was jammed.) I worried about how my sister would make it back, as she was on a work trip to the Middle East. My wife and I looked up at the empty sky and that night listened with uneasy awe to the increasingly quiet night as traffic noise on 476 ebbed to nothing. I thought about my father’s recent sudden and unexpected death only a few months earlier and the images of buildings falling began to tumble into recurrent nightmares about my father’s last moments.
I think I taught on Wednesday the 12th, but we didn’t do anything besides talk, quietly and haltingly, about what had happened. I don’t have any recollection of what the course I was teaching was.
Centennial Professor of Computer Science Tia Newhall
That morning I was teaching a class when a student came in a little late and announced that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. She told us what she knew, which at that point seemed like a bad accident, and then I continued to teach my class. After my class ended it was clear that something different, bigger, and scary was happening. I first went to LPAC, watching the news coverage of the horrors unfolding in a silent room of students and staff. At some point I went home and continued to watch news coverage with my wife, all through the night and the following day. I believe that first night, however it could have been the next day, we finally heard from a close friend who worked near the World Trade Center. She had already started walking home to Brooklyn when the first tower fell, and luckily was not nearby. She was safe. Over the next couple weeks I heard from other friends and acquaintances who lived in NYC. People were searching for missing loved ones, and there were a lot of emails and phone calls going around to help spread the word about NYC friends who were okay. I did not lose a friend or family member on 9/11. I have friends who did.
William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English Literature Peter Schmidt
The memories are gruesome to recall.
9/11 was in the days before phones everywhere at all times. I can’t remember precisely how word spread while morning classes were in session, but it did.
I had a good number of students from NYC and knew several faculty members with family there too. Most of them could not reach their family for hours, for all the phone lines were jammed.
The ones who had loved ones they knew were in lower Manhattan that morning were in agony, often tears flowing nonstop while friends surrounded and held them.
Eventually we all had confirmation of what happened via email and the College shared news that large-screen TVs would be set up on campus. There was a huge one in the LPAC’s main theater, and the space was full of staff, faculty, students. The newscasts showed endless scenes of destruction intercut with interviews of survivors and first responders and others.
Most of those interviewed were covered in grayish silt that made them look like ghosts. They had trouble finding words and were clearly in shock.
What was I teaching in my literature class that morning when the news broke? I remember well and will never forget it. By a creepy coincidence that still disturbs me, I was teaching the Odyssey, the famous scene in which Odysseus goes to the Underworld and, following Circe’s instructions, spills sheep blood so the dead can drink it and (temporarily) regain their memories and consciousness so he can talk to them. It is very painful for the dead. So too for Odysseus. He speaks with several dead fellow warriors and crewmembers, including Achilles, but most painful of all is his conversation with his mother, who died after he left for the Trojan wars. Odysseus tries to hug her but his arms pass through empty space and he howls and cannot be comforted.
On TV for the next several days and weeks, images of the Towers collapsing played on repeat over and over and over.
I also remember talking with several colleagues over the next few days. We all felt that the events would bring out the worst in this country toward “foreigners” of almost all kinds, rekindling its ancient fires of hatred and paranoia. Sadly, our worst fears were not as bad as what actually occurred — and is still happening.
William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Psychology Andrew Ward
On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, I was slated to teach my afternoon research methods class and my evening honors seminar. But first I was scheduled to attend a lunch talk at the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, then located at the University of Pennsylvania (it later moved to Bryn Mawr) and named after a pioneering social psychologist who taught at Swarthmore for nearly two decades and then later at Penn.
I lived on the edge of campus, and I had set my alarm clock for 10:30 a.m. Upon waking, I turned on the radio for a news update. At that point, I heard Dan Raviv, CBS News correspondent, report that both Twin Towers had now collapsed. Fearful that many might be fleeing Philadelphia (we didn’t yet know the dimensions of the attack), I called Penn to inform them I wouldn’t be attending the lunch, since I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t be stuck trying to get back home for my afternoon class at Swarthmore. Incidentally, I believe the talk still happened – a discussion of Mid-East politics by Ian Lustick, political scientist at Penn and one of the Asch Center directors.
Later I met students in my classroom and, given the enormity of the tragedy, told them I had decided we would cancel class for the day. I also opted to forego my seminar that night so that students could attend a special collection in the Meeting House on campus, which I also attended.
I remember the weather that day was absolutely glorious, with a perfectly clear blue sky. I walked around the campus and took some comfort admiring its lush plantings, which looked beautiful and conveyed a sense of peace and calm on that otherwise horrific date.
