At 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, I was on a plane somewhere over Connecticut. I was flying from Logan to LaGuardia, on my way from my home near Boston to teach my second week of class as a baby professor at New York University Law School, when the pilot told us we were going into a holding pattern because a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. I did not know it then, but my career would be shaped by the events and aftermath of that day.
Half of the books I’ve written are about the Middle East and the trajectories of war, terrorism and democracy there. The other half have focused on the U.S. constitutional system, especially its protections of speech and civil liberties, both of which have been deeply inflected by the war on terror. As for my teaching, my current students take for granted a broken world that, in many ways, began that day.
When I was applying for law-school teaching jobs the year before, no one had shown the slightest interest in the Islamic studies doctorate I had earned before law school. Suddenly things were different. The dean of NYU’s law school took me uptown to meet Bill Clinton at his foundation offices, introducing me as the faculty member who would organize an international conference with the former president.
My mentor from Yale Law School told me I should write a book on Islam, democracy and what might happen next. He introduced me to an agent, who introduced me to an editor, who agreed to publish the book.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
