RINDGE — How do you put a dollar amount on the value of a life?
Answering that question became Kenneth Feinberg’s job when he oversaw the Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund.
Feinberg spoke to Franklin Pierce University students in Rindge Tuesday morning via teleconference as part of a course called “America & 9/11.”
The semester-long course takes a comprehensive look at the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, from the day that shocked the world to the ripple effect on people and public policy in the aftermath.
“This is also a humanities course. I’m hoping that students can better understand what it means to be human by looking at the record of this event,” said professor Gerald T. Burns.
The compensation fund was created by Congress less than two weeks after the attacks, which killed 2,977 people. It was created in part because the airlines were worried about getting sued by victims’ family members and potentially going out of business, according to Burns. People who received money from the fund had to forfeit their right to sue.
Franklin Pierce President Andrew H. Card, then the White House chief of staff, recommended Feinberg to President George W. Bush to oversee the fund.
Card, who is known for alerting Bush while at a Florida elementary school that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, stopped by briefly at the beginning of Tuesday’s class.
“Understand that you’re talking to a real American hero in Ken Feinberg,” Card told the students.
Seven billion taxpayer dollars were eventually distributed to victims’ families as compensation for the death of family members.
“Ken Feinberg actually managed an impossible situation extremely well,” Card said.
However, the tough part of the job was not calculating dollars, but the emotion, according to Feinberg.
He met with hundreds of families to discuss potential compensation, but found that people preferred to talk about their lost loved ones.
“They rarely came to see me to talk about the calculations of what they wanted to receive,” he said.
Feinberg said the family members he met with wanted to “validate” the memory of a person they lost by showing him photos and videos, or wanted to vent about life’s unfairness.
“When you hear these very emotional tragic stories, unless you have a heart of stone you’re going to be impacted by it,” he said.
Professor Burns asked Feinberg how Americans have changed since Sept. 11.
“I think Americans are no longer as confident in their security as they once were,” Feinberg responded. “I think before 9/11 nobody ever thought unplanned random horror could come to our shores and I am frankly surprised at how America after 9/11 is so much more willing to accept restrictions on their freedom.”
He said he did not expect the increased security measures throughout the country to last more than a couple years and he is surprised with how people have responded.
“I would’ve thought that they would’ve been outraged at government surveillance under the Patriot Act and restrictions on their civil liberties,” Feinberg said. “They are not.”
Burns’ students were just children when the World Trade Center towers were attacked 14 years ago.
The class aims to help them better discern what they were too young to grasp at the time — the magnitude of the event and the loss of so many people — and see how one day would shape the society in which they grew up.
“Even without understanding, they knew something terrible had happened and that life was going to change,” Burns said. “What we’re able to do is allow them to explore that.”
Sarah Sheils took the class to better understand the events of that day.
“I was so young when it did happen, and throughout high school we rarely talked about the events and the times that followed in depth,” she said. “What I hope to gain from taking this class is a greater understanding of what happened on 9/11 and the resulting actions the United States responded with.”
Mackenzie Brewer’s friends recommended the course and she said she’s glad to have followed their advice.
“Following the attacks I can say with confidence that I hardly ever learned or discussed the attacks on September 11 in school,” Brewer said. “This is why I am so interested in learning more about it because there is just so much information, opinions, and views that I would never have a chance to learn if it were not for this course.”
