Tragedy struck the United States of America on Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 terrorists committed a series of coordinated attacks that resulted in plane crashes in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa.
These attacks claimed the lives of 2,977 people and forever changed our country’s psyche as well as its domestic and foreign policies.
The terrorists hijacked commercial airplanes and intentionally crashed two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, Sept. 11, 2001, into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Shortly thereafter, both of the towers collapsed.
Approximately 30 minutes later, the hijackers crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. The fourth jet, United Airlines Flight 93, originally intended to hit a target in Washington, D.C., crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pa., when passengers prevented the plane from hitting its target.
Sept. 11, 2011, marked the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. All across the United States people gathered to remember those who lost their lives that day.
So that we can reflect on those attacks and learn from the ensuing decade-long fight against terrorism, The Jacksonville Bar Association and the Human Rights Law Section welcomes David Cole, a renowned scholar and author as the featured speaker at the next monthly luncheon of The JBA at 12:15 p.m. Sept. 30 at the Hyatt.
David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, a volunteer attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and a commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.”
He is the author of six books. His first book, “No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System,” was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Boston Book Review, and best book on an issue of national policy in 1999 by the American Political Science Association.
“Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism” received the American Book Award in 2004.
“Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror,” published in 2007, and co-authored with Jules Lobel, won the Palmer Civil Liberties Prize for best book on national security and civil liberties.
His most recent book is “The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable” (2009).
He has litigated many significant constitutional cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, including Texas v. Johnson and United States v. Eichman, which extended First Amendment protection to flag burning; National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, which challenged political content restriction on NEA funding; and most recently, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, which challenged the constitutionality of the statute prohibiting “material support” to terrorist groups, which makes speech advocating peace and human rights a crime.
He has been involved in many of the nation’s most important cases involving civil liberties and national security, including the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen rendered by U.S. officials to Syria and tortured there.
New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis has called Cole “one of the country’s great legal voices for civil liberties today,” and Nat Hentoff has called him “a one-man Committee of Correspondence in the tradition of patriot Sam Adams.”
He has received numerous awards for his human rights work, including from the Society of American Law Teachers, the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU of Southern California, the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
The Human Rights Law Section encourages all JBA members to come and hear Professor Cole. We welcome nonmembers to attend the luncheon at a cost of $40.
Reservations are required so please email [email protected] or fax your request to 399-4854 by 4 p.m Sept. 28 or until seating capacity is reached.
Lastly, if you are interested in joining the Human Rights Law Section of The JBA, please email Crystal Freed at [email protected] or Alessandro Apolito at [email protected].