9/11 @ Stanford

Some comments on how September 11th, 2001 touched Stanford University.

It’s already been a full year. It’s hard to believe. I was scheduled to preach at an AGTS chapel service that morning. As soon as I saw the planes hit I began changing my message, although I fully expected the phone call that came shortly afterwards: “We’ll reschedule–we just feel like we need to devote the full service to prayer.”

In that year I’ve moved from there to here, and I was surprised to learn how Stanford was affected by the terrorist attacks on our culture.

A few items in no particular order:

I found this brief story about the 40 Iranian nationals who study at Stanford interesting. I also thought this administrator’s perspective on their plight was interesting.

I also was shocked to learn that Stanford received fake anthrax mailings last October. Those incidents spawned an emergency response force. I did find it mildly humorous that the biosafety manager had to get special permission to just analyze everything herself. I’m sure the Stanford research laboratories were much better equipped (and the researchers more highly trained) than at the Santa Clara county facilities.

The community as a whole seems less traumatized and polarized than many other campuses: both Berkeley and San Francisco State have seen some pretty angry encounters over Middle-Eastern issues, but tempers at Stanford have been much cooler.

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