We had just settled into our breakout discussion when the staff member handling meeting logistics gave us the news. Planes had hit the towers of the World Trade Center. The Pentagon was on fire. We sat there stunned and confused. It was almost impossible to process the information. Had something gone completely crazy? Slowly, it hit us: The United States was under a terrorist assault. More news, a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. We reconvened in the main meeting room, bewildered. Those of us with family and friends in the areas affected frantically dialed our cell phones. Mine finally rang back. My brother, whose office was in the World Financial Center, was safe. The abstract discourse of an academic meeting unraveled. We, whose lives are dedicated to making sense of things, stood numbed. Could we ever make sense of the horror we watched on the hotel lobby television?
In the ...
