By Laurie Babinski
Editor in Chief
Vietnam. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy. And now, Sept. 11.
“I do believe that every generation has its test,” said U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. “This was your generation’s defining moment.”
With the images of Sept. 11 still freshly engrained in everyone’s mind, Boxer kicked off the annual Dean’s Lecture Series Thursday in Smothers Theatre attempting to add historical and legislative perspective to the attacks that still seem surreal.
Boxer, who was in a 9 a.m. meeting on Sept. 11, saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon and was forced to evacuate the Capitol building. When she looked back at the dome, Boxer said that she saw everything it stood for. “Under that dome is the greatest democracy on earth,” she said.
And that was only her first displacement. Boxer has been barred from her office in the Hart Senate Building since anthrax, enough to kill 2 1/2 million people, was found in Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s office. The challenge, Boxer said, was to look for a way to help her constituents — including the families of the 39 Californians who died on the hijacked planes — while dealing with the situation herself.
“I realized that fate had put me in a position to help,” Boxer said. “And what was I going to do?”
Boxer’s initial aid came from the emergency powers she and other senators passed in the U.S. Patriot Act, which granted President George W. Bush the authority to pursue the terrorists at any expense.
In the following months the Senate also gave aviation assistance to the troubled airline industry.
“We didn’t say, ‘Our hearts are breaking, here’s the treasury of New York,” Boxer said.
But Boxer said that the bipartisan lines seemed to disappear to ensure the safety of America.
“It isn’t easy to bring people together, but on this it was easy,” Boxer said.
It was the nature of cooperation that has inspired Boxer in the days since Sept. 11. Still prohibited from entering her Capitol office, Boxer hasn’t wasted time. She has widened her legislative agenda to once again include legislation aimed at the economy, the environment, civil rights, education and energy.
But the road hasn’t been as easy as the Sept. 11 legislation. “It’s a healthy thing to have debate,” Boxer said. “As long as it’s respectful.”
Boxer’s brief speech left ample time for questions. Inquiries covered a wide range of topics including SAT scores, civil liberties, the environment, Sept. 11 funds and gun control.
Boxer even garnered laughs when she thanked students — which she assumed were mostly Republicans — for listening to a Democrat.
“I was really impressed with how compassionate, intelligent and even humorous she was,” freshman communications major Jenny Morgan said. “Sept. 11 was a real attention grabber. I know where I was that day, but everyone wants to know what our leaders were doing and where they were.”
Boxer’s address was the inaugural lecture of the 2002 Dean’s Lecture Series. The series will continue Monday at 7 p.m. with “Camera on the Middle East: An Arab Perspective,” by George Azar. Azar is a renowned photojournalist who has covered Middle Eastern politics and culture for the past 19 years. His work has taken him to Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
Azar’s work has appeared in newspapers, magazines and books worldwide, including The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Christian Science Monitor, U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek.
Azar was the subject of the 1987 Emmy award winning CBS short feature, “Beirut Photographer,” and is the author of “Palestine, A Photographic Journey.”
The lecture series will continue Feb. 28 at 7 p.m. when Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy D. Baca will speak on “Law Enforce-ment Challenges in Urban America.”
Sheriff Baca is a native of East Los Angeles and has served Los Angeles County as sheriff since December 1998, commanding the largest sheriff’s department in the world.
Baca will be followed March 18 by Dr. Luis Lugo with “The Diminishing Divide: Religion’s Growing Role in American Public Life.”
Lugo has held teaching positions at Gordon College and Calvin College, but since 1997 he has served as director of the Religion and Public Life section of the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lugo established the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and he and his colleagues have involved the Trusts in major initiatives relating to religion and higher education, faith-based social services, the role of congregations in the civic incorporation of new immigrants, Hispanic leadership, and religion and the media.
The series concludes on April 8 at 7 p.m. with a presentation titled, “Afrocentricity: Multiculturalism and the Clash of Civil-ization,” featuring Dr. Molefi Kete Asante.
Seaver College has hosted the Seaver Dean’s Lecture Series with the support of the Seaver College Board of Visitors and the Seaver Parents Association.
January 24, 2002