Бывший президент студенческого совета Университета Небраски признает ошибки в реакции на теракты 11 сентября

Nathan Fuerst was glued to his TV at his home in the North Bottoms as he watched the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 unfold over 1,200 miles away.  He realized his year as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s student body president was going to look a lot different from what he originally expected.  “I sat there for 30 to 45 minutes and watched everything unfold, watched the second plane hit, and then I said to my roommate, ‘I need to go to the office. We’ve got to get to work,” he said.  Fuerst, who is now the vice president for Student Life and Enrollment at the University of Connecticut, said he remembers putting a lot of the everyday student government agenda items on the back burner those first two months after the terrorist attacks. Instead, he prioritized safety legislation, both for securing events from terrorism and protecting the UNL Muslim population from discrimination.  “It certainly was stressful,” he said. “I think I feel like we were just moving so fast that you didn't necessarily stop to think about the stress on a regular basis. There was just a lot to respond to.”  A 2001 editorial from The Daily Nebraskan criticized Fuerst for putting too much focus on “far-off events.”  “Certainly, in retrospect, there are some things that we could have done better,” he said.  If he could go back, he said he would’ve tasked a vice president with advancing the university-specific issues rather than allowing the whole student government to get wrapped up in the international conflict.   Still, he said he saw prioritizing legislation on the attack as necessary because the students were afraid.  Since then, Fuerst said he’s broadened his worldview and learned that while people may be critical of the United States, they are far more welcoming than hateful.  While he said it’s still worth being wary of countries that have historically conflicted with the U.S., letting fear control people isn’t good either.  “It's not like everybody's, you know, singing "Kumbaya" in a circle about us, but I do think that some amount of openness to the world, even of those who are critics, is really important,” he said.   After graduating, Fuerst spent some time working in admissions at UNL, where he saw the university making an effort to train staff to better support students from places like Saudi Arabia.  “Where there was once fear and skepticism, I think we did grow from that moment,” he said. “I don't know that it's avoidable in an instance where your country is under attack by another country that you're not going to feel some form of fear, but it's where you go with that fear from there.”  Ryan Wilkins, a litigation and employment attorney who studied economics at UNL, remembers 9/11 as a time that created unity among people to support the victims, yet he still remembers some “ugliness,” referring to how Middle Eastern and other exchange student friends were at higher risk of experiencing racism.  “It was a scary and concerning time to be almost anything other than white on campus,” Wilkins said. A semester after the attacks, Wilkins took over as president for the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska. He said he has no memory of any 9/11-related legislation coming across his desk, but he tried to make an effort to befriend the communities who were still facing discrimination as a result of the attack.  As president, he attended a panel on Civil Rights in the Face of Terrorism, which discussed racial profiling in spaces that pose national security threats.  At the time, Wilkins said that though racial profiling is bad and an inconvenience, it was not a violation of rights.  Now, 24 years later and having learned about racial profiling in law school, Wilkins said his perspective has changed.  “To profile in a way that assumes the worst in large groups of people is classic stereotyping,” he said. “It’s not only hurtful, I don’t think it’s a legitimate way to pursue law enforcement.”  He said he admits he was dismissive of that viewpoint at the time. It took hearing classmates describe being interrogated or physically confronted, not just questioned, for him to see how far profiling could go.  “I don’t see it the same way anymore,” he said. “I think racial profiling is unequivocally wrong.”  Another year later, Wilkins, who had just completed his term as ASUN president, returned from a trip to Israel where he learned about terrorism.  On the trip, Wilkins said he was reminded of the threat of terrorism and moved to alert people not to forget that it was still a concern. He and another classmate set up a memorial to remember those lost in 9/11.  “It was important to me that as the years went on, that we didn't get lulled to sleep by believing that the threat had passed,” he said.  At the event, Wilkins said he encouraged immediate action, either through diplomacy or military action.  But 25 years later, he said he regrets how oversimplified he made the situation.  “I was really focused on not allowing us to repeat the harm, and I was also confident in repeating what the adults around me were saying,” he said. “But as a 21-year-old business major, I just don't think that I had either the research or the benefit of hindsight that time has given us.”  Though he said he still supports finding and killing Osama Bin Laden and his accomplices, he no longer believes the way the conflict has evolved is right.  “It really just became so unwieldy and so distantly connected to the attack that prompted it,” he said. “I just think there was a lot of oversimplification happening in reporting and in my own understanding that, with the benefit of 20 plus more years of reflection, I don't think I would stand on all of that today.”  Wilkins said it wasn’t just his own naivety, but also a result of government messaging that made it seem “obvious” who the good guys were.   "There's a tendency toward oversimplification in the heat of the moment, especially wrapped up in anger and grief over a mass-casualty event," he said. “But I think that if we do that, we short-circuit more thoughtful and intelligent decisions.” When reflecting on the impact of 9/11, Wilkins said he encourages Americans like him to recognize the privilege they have of never having to experience the wars that preceded the attack.  “If we can just, for a moment, imagine a universe that's different from the one we're in, where we're born in a different country, and rather than doing the occupying, we’re the occupied,” he said. “I can only imagine the pain and the rage that would flow through me to see injustice on my land, to know my loved ones were killed or wrapped up in indiscriminate bombing.”  Gallery [email protected]