Good morning, everyone. It’s my solemn honor to speak with you in this place and on this day, September 11th, 2026, on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the deadliest act of terrorism ever perpetrated on American soil, and the deadliest single terror attack in modern history. Normally when I give speeches commemorating events at Harvard or elsewhere, I read deeply about their history and try find some narrative arc, or larger lesson, that ties into what’s happening in the world today. If I’m lucky, I find some wisdom along the way, maybe even a silver lining.

And I tried, I really did. But the truth is that 9/11 was horrific. It was one of those days when everyone remembers exactly where they were, and who they were with. I was in a Holiday Inn in Bishop, CA. I was a senior in college and my friends and I were on a road trip back home from Seattle, visiting one of our buddies who had just landed a job at Microsoft. I went down to the hotel gym early that morning, before everyone was awake. I tuned into CNN at about 6am Pacific, just in time to see the 2nd plane hit the South Tower. I went upstairs and woke everyone up. We called our families, packed up, got in the car, and drove straight home. The road trip was over. 

My wife Janine – whom I didn’t yet know – was at Ground Zero in NYC. She worked at Citigroup, just blocks away from the towers. Like so many others, she ran in fear, through chaos and smoke. She tried for hours to call her parents on a pay phone. A few months later, she realized she hated her job in finance, quit, traveled the world, moved to San Francisco, and that is where we met. Maybe that’s the silver lining.

As I sat down to write this speech, I struggled to draw any larger lesson from this unthinkable tragedy. I don’t think there is one, except that we should never forget. And I’m optimistic that we won’t, in part because of events like these, where the wonderful students from the Concord Institute organized this vigil despite having no personal memory of 9/11. It would be easy for students like you to put this aside, to read about it in the history books and shrug. But instead, you’ve worked to keep the memory of 9/11 alive. And I’m grateful for that. We should all be grateful.

Long before I became Dean, I realized that most of my students were not yet born when it happened. I’m 47 now, so I was 22 when it happened. That means that anyone more than a few years younger than me has no adult memory of what 9/11 was like, and how much the world changed that day. Someday mine will be the last generation to hold 9/11 in living memory, which is a sober thought.

So I figured the least I could do today was tell you what it was like to live through 9/11 from the perspective of someone who was more or less at your life stage when it happened.

It began as a sunny fall morning, like today. American Airlines flight 11 took off from Boston at 7:59 am, bound for Los Angeles. Right after they reached cruising altitude, two flight attendants called American Airlines and reported that the plane was being hijacked. At 8:46am the plane, having turned around, crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, striking floors 93 to 99 at a speed of 443 miles per hour. Everyone aboard and hundreds of people in the building were killed instantly. All three stairwells in the impact zone were rendered impassable, trapping more than 1300 people on the upper floors. None above the 91st floor survived, although they did not know that was their fate at the time. Most people below the 91st floor escaped.

United Airlines Flight 175 – the 2nd plane – was hijacked around 8:45, around the time when the first plane hit the North tower. But this wasn’t obvious at the time. For a crucial 17-minute stretch, news coverage of the event speculated about a pilot error or a navigation failure. People didn’t yet know, and couldn’t comprehend, that the plane strike was intentional. Some people evacuated the South Tower before it was struck. But an announcement inside the building advised people that they were safe and they could return to their floors. 

At 9:03am, flight 175 struck the South Tower at a speed of 542 mph. Like the North Tower, this was a death sentence for every passenger and nearly everyone at impact level or above. After the first strike, TV cameras were broadcasting live while the stations were trying to figure out what happened. That means the South Tower strike was witnessed live by millions of people, including me in my hotel gym in Bishop, CA. In that moment, we all knew – we all felt, in our hearts and in the pits of our stomachs - that America was under attack. What we didn’t know was that there were two more planes.

News coverage instantly pivoted to speculation about terrorism. At the same time American Airlines Flight 77, which had taken off 45 minutes earlier for LA, turned around and headed back toward Washington DC. United Flight 93, which had taken off from Newark, had just gotten in the air because of a 25-minute ground delay. That delay gave passengers time to learn what had happened to the other planes. 

At 9:37 am, American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Western side of the Pentagon at a speed of 530 mph. Everyone on board and 125 people inside the building were killed on impact. The headquarters of the American military was on fire. The White House and the Capitol building were evacuated. At 9:42, the FAA ordered every civilian aircraft in the US to land at the nearest airport.

The passengers aboard Flight 93, realizing something was wrong, began calling friends and family, and they learned what was happening in New York and DC. At 9:57, the heroic passengers of flight 93, realizing that this was not a normal hijacking, attempted to retake the airplane. The cockpit voice recorder captured a desperate struggle, with the hijackers violently maneuvering the airplane to knock the passengers off their feet. 

At 9:59am, the South Tower of the World Trade center collapsed, 56 minutes after impact. A 110-story skyscraper disappeared into a cloud of smoke and rubble. The collapse took only 10 seconds. Both towers survived the initial impact, but the violent injection of jet fuel into a skeleton-frame steel skyscraper shot fireballs into and through the structure of the building, which reached temperatures exceeding 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. The steel gradually softened, degrading the structural integrity of the buildings and causing them to cave inward. 

At this point, the streets of Manhattan were already in chaos, with occupants fleeing the scene and brave first responders running directly into the burning buildings. The collapse of the South Tower produced what the 9/11 commission called a “ferocious windstorm” that blotted out the sun and choked the area with a cloud of smoke. The cloud contained pulverized building materials, including concrete, glass, and mineral fibers.  Many firefighters experienced a severe persistent respiratory illness afterward that they called “World Trade Center cough.” FDNY and lower Manhattan residents had elevated rates of chronic lung disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer for years afterward.

At 10:03 am, just 4 minutes after the South tower fell, Flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, 125 miles from the nation’s capital. Everyone aboard died. NORAD didn’t learn that the flight had been hijacked until after it crashed, so the passengers’ actions certainly saved hundreds more lives. The hijackers were almost certainly targeting either the White House or the Capitol Building.

At 10:28 am, the North tower collapsed, killing everyone still inside. All told, 2,977 victims were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At least 12 of them had Harvard connections, including 3 Harvard College alumni – David Alger, Michael Packer, and Edward Hennessy Jr. And we honor their memories today. 

It’s important to understand that the impact of 9/11 went far beyond those directly affected. Heart disease and cancer combined kill more than 3,500 Americans every day. So why is this different?

9/11 wasn’t just death and tragedy, it was terrorism. Airplanes flying across this beautiful country – symbols of progress – turned against us, turned into weapons. In the confusion that morning, we didn’t initially realize we were being attacked, or who the enemy was, or whether more was coming. Without reliable cell service, NYC residents spent panicked hours trying to locate their loved ones. In the aftermath, missing person searches slowly turned into vigils – funerals, without bodies, or a sense of closure.

9/11 was an attack on the idea of America, on who we are. The hijackers exploited our openness. It changed some things about America forever. It changed our sense of the balance between freedom and security. We gave up some civil liberties, some temporarily and some permanently. Outward patriotism, trust, religious participation, and political unity all increased greatly in the months after 9/11. People found all kinds of new ways to help each other. Blood donations surged. 

Some of these changes didn’t last, but it was a reminder that however divided this country can sometimes feel, we can – and will – unite against a common threat or to accomplish a shared goal. And as I look out on the audience today, I see young people who still want those things for America. People who are proud of their country, who believe in its founding promise that all of us are created equal, that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That we are a nation of immigrants, seeking the tired, and poor huddled masses who are yearning to breathe free. 

And it makes me proud to be an American, all over again, 25 years later. I hope that by understanding our history through vigils and remembrances like these, we can rekindle that great American spirit, and that a new wave of patriotism will arise from within us, not as a response to tragedy, but from the fervent hope that we can achieve something great together, one nation under God, indivisible. Thank you.