Campus Looks At Road Ahead

As the Harvard campus slowly returns to normal after Tuesday’s attacks, students have begun to express their feelings about how aggressively the United States should pursue those responsible for the terrorist attacks.

While they generally agreed that concern for the victims should come first, students varied in how much discretion they said will be appropriate in the search for suspects.

Saif I. Shah Mohammed ’02, president of the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS), said he feels protecting the innocent in other countries, potential targets of U.S. retaliation, should still be of the utmost importance.

“Innocent people like them and like us who have nothing to do with this, and whose traditions have nothing to do with this...must be protected,” Shah Mohammed said. “If innocent people should be made to suffer, that will only fulfill the objectives of the perpetrators.”

While he said he understands and shares the anger over Tuesday’s events, Shah Mohammed also urged restraint.

“It is important for everybody to keep a level head at this time. We’re only giving the perpetrators of the crime a victory when we lose our heads,” he said.

Loeb Professor of Classical Art and Architecture David G. Mitten, who joined HIS at a meeting last night, echoed Shah Mohammed’s sentiments.

“The U.S. should react with great restraint. There should be no jumping to conclusions, no scapegoats until U.S. intelligence has proof as to who did this,” Mitten said at the HIS meeting.

Elbridge A. Colby ’02, however, described calls for peace as “sanguine,” and said the appropriate response is “a sort of cold, unyielding anger.”

“These people have no problem using innocent people as a cover for them,” Colby said, referring to terrorists. “The blood is on their hands, not ours.”

But even as he urged an aggressive response, Colby also urged some measure of restraint.

“Anger is appropriate... Anger needs to drive us to a certain extent. But we need to keep in mind that there are innocent people,” he said.

Other students seemed to echo this note of caution. Kofi A. Kumi ’04 said certainty about the perpetrator’s identity should precede U.S. action.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Hurry, hurry, make sure we punish someone,’” Kumi said. “If we act like that, it makes us no better than the people we’re after.”

Tong “Max” Chen ’04, a student from China, said he felt a firm response was called for from the U.S. But he also cautioned that an intransigent foreign policy may be partly to blame for what has already happened.

Chen said his family views President Bush’s foreign policy with apprehension, and suggested recent terrorism may be a response to that policy.

“U.S.-China relations reached a trough because of the spy-plane incident,” he said, referring to events near Taiwan in April.

Yet even the more hawkish students, while urging action against whoever is responsible, hesitate to say innocent people should also have to perish.

“I think they’re completely justified if they attack bin Laden’s troops,” said Craig D. May ’02. “[But] I don’t believe they should bomb innocent civilians.”