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Office
of the Chancellor
September 11, 2002
To the University Community:
A year ago, al-Qaeda terrorists aimed a blow at the heart of America.
They missed. They killed nearly 3,000 people and destroyed several major
buildings, but beyond that, they damaged not America but themselves.
They have lost their safe haven in Afghanistan. And although the people
of that tormented country face a long journey to a stable democracy, their
feet are on the road. At the end of August 2002, as I write this, the
terrorists have not mounted another major strike at America. They can
claim at most aborted attempts by marginal terrorists.
But as you read this, they may have struck again as ruthlessly and as
effectively as they did a year ago. They have, after all, already demonstrated
their intelligence, perverse devotion, and lack of scruple. But if they
attack again, it will profit them no more than did their first assault.
The American people, and the rest of the world with them, will not be
cowed. This will be true at Boston University as it will be true across
America and around the civilized world. Boston University is an American
institution, and it is also a world institution. We can take for our own
the words of C. S. Lewis at the beginning of the Second World War:
I think it important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. . . . Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. . . . Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. . . . [We] propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the latest new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb . . . hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache: it is our nature.
Lewis invoked heroic figures - Archimedes, Socrates, Sir Thomas More,
General Wolfe, Leonidas and his Spartans - not for their heroism, but
for their continued engagement in the life of the mind even while facing
the
certainty or possibility of imminent death. In September 1939, the members
of the University of Oxford faced a future full of threat. Lewis offered
them this sobering and ennobling lesson. It commands our attention at
Boston University in 2002.
- John Silber
6 September 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations