University Times

With the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, approaching, various groups at the University are preparing commemorative activities.

University-wide "There will be events on campus throughout the day," said Pitt spokesperson John Harvith. "The University will observe the national moment of silence at 8:46 a.m., and there will be a flag-raising ceremony on the Cathedral lawn following that."

As the University Times went to press, other events were still being planned here. Harvith said a flyer will be distributed to the Pitt community announcing all University-wide events when they are finalized.

Pitt unit-sponsored events The University Center for International Studies and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs are co-sponsoring a Sept. 11 commemorative forum, "September 11 — Perspectives From Abroad."

Participants include Reid Andrew, professor of history; Patrick Doreian, professor of sociology, and Robert Hayden, professor of anthropology, who will share their views on how the world has been affected by 9/11 and subsequent events.

William Keller, director of the Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies, will serve as moderator.

The forum is scheduled for Sept. 11 at noon in 2K56 Posvar Hall.

As part of its contemporary issues series, the September-November session of Pitt's Center for Lifetime Learning (CLL), a division of the College of General Studies, is offering several classes on 9/11-related issues, led by Pitt faculty members and community leaders.

Courses include: "One Year Later: Where Have All Our Civil Liberties Gone?" (coordinated by Kenneth Boas, instructor in Pitt's English department), "In Defense of Our Civil Liberties: Before and After Sept. 11," "Illegal Detention: It Can Happen Here" and "A History of Civil Liberties, and the Arab Community Speaks Out" (with Pitt law professor Jules Lobel, and others).

For more information or to register for a course, contact CLL at: www.pitt.edu/~cgs/lifetime or 412/648-2560.

International forum Several Pitt faculty and graduate students are participating in an international research forum in the United Kingdom titled "Innocence, Terror, Public Policy: The September 11th Anniversary" Sept. 9-13 at the University of London.

Pitt and the London Consortium — comprising the Architectural Association, Birkbeck College, the Institute for Contemporary Arts and the Tate Gallery — are sponsoring the five-day seminar.

Organized by Pitt's Graduate Program for Cultural Studies and the London Consortium's graduate program, Pitt faculty and graduate students will present papers and exchange views with academicians and graduate students from U.K. universities on the impact of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon one year later.

Workshop participants will address U.S. and international responses to 9/11, examining ways in which it redefined existing knowledge systems in many areas of public discourse.

A selection of papers delivered during the seminar will be subject to review for publication in a special issue of Critical Quarterly (www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk).

According to Pitt associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures Nancy Condee, director of the Graduate Program for Cultural Studies, U.S. intellectuals and their colleagues abroad share little consensus in debates surrounding 9/11; nor, she says, can they agree on the role that they play as participants in the global discussion.

Pitt participants, in addition to Condee, are Colin MacCabe, professor of English at Pitt and chairman of the London Consortium; Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in History of Art and Architecture; Ronald A. T. Judy, professor of English; Eric O. Clarke, associate professor and director of graduate studies in English; Adam Lowenstein, assistant professor of English and film studies; Anustup Basu, Mellon post-doctoral fellow in English; April Eisman, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, and Richard Purcell, a Ph.D. candidate in English.

Student-oriented activities The Pitt Program Council (PPC), an entertainment programming organization geared mostly to student activities, is presenting the following events and activities this Sept. 11, according to the PPC web site (www.pitt.edu/~ppc):

* PPC, courtesy of Brad Grey Productions and HBO, will screen the HBO documentary film, "In Memoriam," a one-hour account of the Sept. 11, 2001 events.

The film will be shown free of charge in the William Pitt Union Assembly Room at the following times: 10:10 a.m., noon, 1:30 p.m., 3 p.m., 4:30 p.m., 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9:11 p.m.

* At dusk on Sept. 11, weather permitting, PPC will light 456 luminaria on the William Pitt Union Bigelow Boulevard lawn and 455 on the Cathedral of Learning lawn (911 in all) in commemoration of the tragic events of last year.

PPC also announced that the church bells of nearby St. Paul's Cathedral will ring at the following times: 8:46 a.m., in commemoration of the victims of American Flight 11 crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center; 9:03 a.m., for victims of United Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center; 9:45 a.m., in honor of the victims of American Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon, and 10:10 a.m., in commemoration of the victims of United Flight 93 crashing in Somerset County.

For more information, call PPC at 412/648-7900.

–Peter Hart