Just two days into a week of orientation events for new HSPH students, the school’s community found itself drawn together suddenly by terrorist attacks on Tuesday, September 11 in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.

A "Welcome Address" Becomes Much More

Approximately 200 students gathered at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11 outside the Kresge cafeteria to listen to James Ware, dean for academic affairs, deliver an annual welcome address. Many of the attendees apparently knew nothing of the attacks that had started merely an hour before. Ware briefly described the events, eliciting gasps of surprise and shock from the audience. He then incorporated the tragedies into a larger discussion of the role and mission of HSPH and public health.

"Something like this does touch a school of public health," said Ware. "We in public health believe that we’re part of one world and that we share this planet, its resources, and aspirations for the well-being of all peoples."

He continued, "If this event proves to be what we think it is, it shows us that we are part of a world community, both in the most horrible and most promising ways, offering a challenge to us as a people."

Ware also welcomed the students on behalf of Dean Barry Bloom, who was flying that morning to Washington, DC to attend a press conference as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s committee on stem cell research. (Dean Bloom arrived without incident.)

Following his comments on the morning’s attacks, Ware went on to describe public health and its relationship to medicine and its role in the Harvard community. He said that public health and medicine have a longstanding partnership, with public health focused on the well-being of populations and medicine focused on individual patients.

Prevention of disease–rather than its treatment–is another keystone of public health that differentiates it from medicine, he said. The two fields, however, complement each other, and he described how HSPH had fostered meaningful collaborations with Harvard Medical School, particularly in training physicians on undertaking clinical investigations.

Ware concluded his address by urging students to seek what inspires them. "Take the opportunity of your time at Harvard to find what gives you meaning," he said, "and let’s all come together to make the world a better place."

Forums for Expression

Still reeling from the morning’s attacks, several dozen HSPH students, faculty, and staff gathered outside of the Kresge cafeteria in the afternoon of September 11 to discuss their reactions. The Community Forum was organized by HSPH administration.

Another Forum held on Friday, September 14 attracted about 70 students and included a memorial to HSPH alumnus Paul Ambrose, MPH 2000, who was a passenger on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, many attendees described how they had just begun to process thoughts about the events, still raw in their minds.

Marc Roberts, professor of political economy in the Department of Health Policy and Management, said he thought the tragedies could provide a "teachable moment," in which people could discuss how to integrate feelings of grief, outrage, sadness, and bewilderment into their lives and studies. He shared the first of what would become a series of personal stories from attendees.

Two years ago, Roberts recounted, he took a walk with a former HSPH student among white crosses in a park in the former war-torn Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. The crosses marked an area that had been favored by snipers, who would shoot children on their way to school and then kill the adults offering them help.

Roberts offered the provocative question of how long people should tolerate those who are intolerant of others. "Some people believe that violence is an acceptable solution to human conflict," he said. "I urge all of you to think about the question of whether you are prepared to continue to be tolerant of that, or if you are prepared to say that violence is not an acceptable solution to conflict, no matter what the tragedy."

An Iranian Kurdish student shared his memory of being 14 years old and waiting to see if his grandmother, aunt, and two cousins would emerge from a bomb shelter that had been attacked. He described standing in the rubble, feeling angry, vengeful, and, simultaneously, unwilling to inflict such pain on his enemies. He said he felt once again victimized by the attacks on September 11, but he also called for restraint.

"We all condemn that act," he said. "Some of us might rush to conclusions and fingerpointing or maybe even generalizations. Let’s not do that. It might be a Muslim group that did [the attack]. As a Muslim, I condemn it, and I say that they brought shame to me. They brought shame to my religion, shame to everything that my religion stands for."

A student from India recalled the violence between Hindus and Muslims that he witnessed as a teenager. He remembered walking among corpses on the streets of Bombay following a bombing, and he offered a cautionary tale of the violence produced from escalating, retaliatory acts. He said the conflicts were "bleeding wounds" that have not healed.

"Moments like these are a test to human patience," he added. "They test human intelligence."

An American student shared her memory as a young child of an uncle buying her a banana split at the World Trade Center. "I thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world, and so this must be the most wonderful place in the world," she remembered, with tears rolling down her cheeks. Now, saying that some of her friends were pregnant, she wondered, "What kind of a world are these children going to be raised in?"

An American MPH student and Navy aviator said the attacks reminded him of Pearl Harbor but added he thought the American people, with the support of others around the world, would pull together. He urged everyone to offer prayers for the victims and their families.

At the second Community Forum on Friday, Dean Bloom addressed the group and described emerging from National Airport in Washington, DC to see the smoking Pentagon in the distance. He quoted a saying from the realm of infectious disease prevention: "There is no place from which we are remote, and there is no one from whom we are disconnected."

"We are directly connected to the tragedies that have occurred," he continued in remembering Ambrose. "These terrible events should cause us to rededicate ourselves to making a difference in the world."

Jennifer Leaning, a professor in the Department of Population and International Health and director of the Program on Humanitarian Crises and Human Rights, and Richard Cash, a lecturer in the Department of Population and International Health, also spoke to the group, as well as Harvard Chaplain John Woodall. As HSPH international students recounted hate incidents already directed at themselves or friends, the attendees made a general call for tolerance and respect. "Anger happens spontaneously; compassion is a choice," said Woodall.