Press

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contacts:

Chris Cory, Pace University, 212-346-1117 / 917-608-8164

Frank Lentini, M. Booth and Associates, 212-481-7000 ext. 601

Joanne Guilmette, NYS Museum 518-474-8730

Note: photos are available on request of objects from the related exhibition of 9/11 artifacts, including a battered 1” x 3” plaque saying “78.” It denoted the sky lobby floor in the south tower, which took a direct impact while many people waited for their elevators.

PACE UNIVERSITY TO HOST

“AFTERSHOCK: RETHINKING THE FUTURE

SINCE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001”

CONFERENCE TO EXAMINE

“THE DAY THAT CHANGED

EVERYTHING”

Speakers include Former White House Adviser David Gergen,

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin,

9/11 commission co-chair Lee Hamilton, Editor William Kristol.

Event is Part of Pace University Centennial Celebration

NEW YORK, N.Y., July 24, 2006 – Five years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Pace University, four blocks from Ground Zero, will host a major conference to examine how those tragic events changed the world in which we live.

Taking place Wednesday through Friday, Sept. 6-8, at the University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts on Spruce Street, just East of City Hall in New York City, the conference is likely to be the most wide-ranging anniversary forum on the effects of 9/11. Many of the high-level participants have not spoken publicly about 9/11 before.

The conference is titled “Aftershock: Rethinking the Future Since September 11, 2001.”

Admission is free but registration is required. More information is at www.pace.edu/aftershock.

Officials and scholars. The nearly 40 speakers include the vice chair of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Lee Hamilton, a former Congressman who now is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; David Gergen, White House adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton and editor-at-large of US News & World Report, who will deliver the opening address; Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Presidential historian; and Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, who will give the closing speech.

Their views will be juxtaposed with the practical experience of many of the key public officials involved in rebuilding and protecting the city’s downtown, including John Cahill, Secretary to Governor George Pataki and his downtown reconstruction coordinator; Stefan Pryor, President of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and Congressman Jerrold Nadler. US Senator Charles E. Schumer, State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly have been invited.

Topics: From Emotions to Economy. “This conference is about preparing for America’s future,” said Pace University President David A. Caputo, a political scientist who also is a conference participant. “We expect to help prioritize the steps that our nation, state, and city need to take to complete our emotional and political reaction to the aftershocks of 9/11. We hope for both contention and consensus on issues from port security and pandemics to local and national politics and foreign policy to reduce the threat of attacks.”

Nine panels will probe everything from the emotional impact on individuals to the economic effects on the global economy. One session examines how 9/11 has changed the preparedness of first responders; another looks at the environmental impact of the attacks; a third examines victims’ families and their influence on public policy.

Exhibitions. Accompanying the discussions will be an exhibition of artifacts from 9/11, many not seen since they went into storage after the attacks. Organized by the New York State Museum, “The First 24 Hours” will include a U.S. flag rescued from the rubble, a section of the chain link fence on Broadway hung with dried flowers and notes seeking missing persons, a firefighter’s air tank, and a seat belt from one of the hijacked airplanes. Also on display will be an evocative art installation recreating a World Trade Center office abandoned by a fleeing worker. The work was created a year ago as the senior project of a Pace undergraduate fine art major, Dan Daley. Both exhibitions will be open to the public at times posted on the website.

Pace students will participate in separate seminars with Gergen, Kristol, Godwin and Hamilton. At the public sessions, a bloc of seats will be reserved for students attending Pace High School, the new “small” public school on which Pace collaborates with the New York City Department of Education.

Education, Slavery, Environment. The conference is part of Pace’s Centennial celebration, which includes three other nationally-significant conferences -- a Founders Day Symposium on higher education in a global society (Sept. 27-28); a conference on the Legacies of Slavery and Sisterhood: The Life and Work of Harriet Jacobs (Oct. 6-7) and a worldwide legal summit on Implementing Environmental Legislation (Oct. 16-20).

The Centennial also includes a yearlong volunteer initiative called “100 Opportunities for Service and Civic Engagement” and “Roll Back the Clock Day,” during which Pace cafeterias will offer representative 1906 food items at 1906 prices.

Pace frequently serves as a forum for major addresses by international figures. Starting July 25, Pace will be the location of a series of debates and town meetings involving candidates for New York State offices in this fall’s elections, presented by NY1. Former President Bill Clinton began the Centennial with a speech at Pace in March, a year after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) hosted a town hall meeting on social security there. Millions of Americans tuned in to the 2003 Democratic Presidential candidates’ debate held at Pace and broadcast on MSNBC.

A private university in the New York metropolitan area, Pace has a growing national reputation for offering students opportunity, teaching and learning based on research, civic involvement, international perspectives and measurable outcomes. It is one of the 10 founders of Project Pericles, developing education that encourages lifelong participation in democratic processes. Pace has campuses in downtown and midtown New York City and in Pleasantville, Briarcliff, and White Plains, New York (a graduate center and law school). The University enrolls approximately 14,000 students in undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs in the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Lienhard School of Nursing, Lubin School of Business, Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, School of Education, and Pace Law School. www.pace.edu.

# # #