I'm delivering the first lecture of this course from Downtown Manhattan. I wanted to start the course where it all began, here at the site where the World Trade Center once stood that became Ground Zero after the 9/11 attack, attacks. And is now the site of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. This is hallowed ground in the United States. it is the final resting place of many of the victims of 9/11, whose remains were never be able to be identified. It's a site of tremendous heroism. First responders from the New York City Fire Department, the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority Police department. Rushed from all over Manhattan, to enter the buildings that were a fieyy inferno. They rushed to save the lives of others, and hundreds of them sacrificed their lives, so others could live. This is a place of history. It is the site of the most grievous attack in the history of the United States, it caused the mass murder. A place where there was mass murder of 2,700 people. It was the destruction of two of the largest buildings in the hemisphere at the time. Its a site where a small group of men with nothing but knives and a plan, inflicted a great wound, the world's greatest super powers. And now this is a side of the commemoration, a place of learning and a place of renewal. So my purpose of coming here to start this course is to remind you of our transpire here. To try to give you a sense of the enormity of the atrocity. Those of you who were adults at 2001, and you've been to New York, and you understand this environment, you understand already. You saw the events of 9/11 unfold on TV. And you knew the fear that was in the air, and you felt the sorrow in the country. But time marches on. When I first started teaching this course, students, my students were 16 years old when 9/11 had happened. But now, the students I'm going to teach in this next semester, they will have only been 9 years old when 9/11 occurred. And maybe some of you who are taking this online course, were even younger when these events took place. So I wanted to come here to New York and I wanted to be here to tell the story. Because I don't want 9/11 to become a cliche of two numbers, to understand 9/11, you have to understand it happened to real people. It happened in a real place. In the air, in the skies up above me and on the ground where I am standing today. I hope to stir the memories of those who were adults when this took place. If you don't have those memories to stir your emotions by telling the story of what happened here. You're going to be reading the accounts also in the 9/11 commission report. About what the activities that were taking place on the planes and the governments frantic, but ultimately futile effort to stop the attacks. We're going to be looking at the news coverage from that day, so you can experience how it unfolded for those who are watching on television. And then once we have absorbed these materials, we'll begin our course. We'll be investigating to try to figure out why these events took place and how we responded to it.
