September 09, 2011
September 11, 2001 profoundly affected the St. John’s Law School
community. The attack on the World Trade Center took place just
steps from St. John’s Manhattan campus, and our building served as
a staging area for rescue workers in the days following. Faculty
members and students living in the immediate neighborhood witnessed
the terrorist attack first-hand. Several alumni were working in the
Trade Center when the planes struck and three of our graduates lost
their lives that day.
The St. John’s community was there in the aftermath as well.
Firefighters, police officers, and utility workers in our part-time
program put aside their studies to respond to the crisis. Professor
Adam Zimmerman served as counsel to Special Master Kenneth R.
Feinberg in the design and administration of the September 11th
Victim Compensation Fund. Many alumni, including New York Police
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, United States District Judge Raymond
J. Dearie, and Greg W. Kehoe, who advised the Iraqi Special
Tribunal formed to prosecute Saddam Hussein, helped shape our
country’s responses to that day.
Ten years on, as we continue to come to grips with this horrific
event and the changes it has wrought in our lives, several members
of our faculty are taking part in 9/11 commemorations. On Friday,
September 16, 2011, Professor and Associate Dean for Student
Services
Larry Cunningham will participate in a university sponsored
conference, Making
Meaning of 9/11: Local Impacts, Global Implications. Professor
Cunningham, a criminal law expert, will present his paper,
“Criminalizing Terrorism: Unintended Consequences of Political
Showmanship.”
On Wednesday, September 21, 2011, internationally acclaimed poet
and St. John’s faculty member
Lawrence Joseph will participate in the
9/11 Writers Roundtable. You can hear Professor Joseph reading
his poem “Unyieldingly Present,” in a
Brazilian television broadcast about the tragedy. In addition,
his essay, “And Then You Add the Arab Thing,” appears in the
book Arab
Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade and his poem, “So
Where Are We?” appears in a special 9/11 issue of Granta:
The Magazine of New Writing.