Welcome back to the Dershow. Today is 9-11, and I vividly remember where I was on the

day that those planes crashed into the World Trade Center of the Pentagon and the field

in Pennsylvania. I was about to teach my first class that semester to first year law

students, many of whom had just left where they grew up and were in Cambridge and away

from home for the first time and the law school decided to cancel classes, which was about

the dumbest thing you could do at a time like this. They did the same thing in previous

situations when Robert Kennedy was killed. Cancelation, that's the easiest cop out. I circulated

a note to all of my students. I was teaching like about 170 students in my first year

class, and I said, no, no, no, come to class. Don't listen to the school. Don't listen

to the administration. Come to class. You shouldn't be alone in your dorm rooms with no friends.

At a time like this, come and be with the class, bring a television to the classroom

and television was brought into the classroom. We watched the ensuing events and we spent two hours

talking about what the implications would be for all Americans, indeed, for the world. It was

one of the best classes I ever had. An educator has a responsibility to seize the moment and

to use every horrible tragedy as an educational moment. We had a wonderful discussion.

People presenting different perspectives on what happened. This was more than 20 years ago

at a time when Harvard wasn't as deeply divided as it is today. Today, of course, they'd be

students saying, well, America deserved it. We didn't have any of that. There were all kinds

of discussions about what to do, how to pursue the villains, what punishments they deserve,

what the motives may have been. All kinds of good legal discussions, but nobody took the view,

oh, my God, let's point the finger at ourself. It's interesting. I remember

President Bush throwing out the first Bowl at the Yankee game, and that was a uniting event.

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