How to Become a Terrorism Expert

On the way back from Trujillo, a lovely Colonial city on the Pacific coast,
in the middle of the night, we were kidnapped by a band from the Tupac
Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). We were released unharmed in our underwear
some time later, but that is another story, best left for another time.

Soon after our safe return to Boston, I was required, as I am every year,
to fill out a form for the Boston University office of public affairs,
a form listing my academic and professional affiliations and my areas of
special knowledge or expertise. Actually, I hadn’t a clue as to what this
information was used for and so, half in jest and with my hostage experience
fresh in memory, I listed "International Terrorism" along with "Educational
Technology" and "Cooperative Learning".

Two years later, in March 1993, the day of the first attempt to blow up
the World Trade Center, I got a call from the BU public affairs office.
"A reporter from Channel 56 would like to ask you a few questions about
the terrorist attack in New York", she said.

Always obliging, I agreed, although at the time I had no idea why Channel
56 would want to talk to me, having forgotten completely about the form
I had filled out two years previously. But I was game, and being a news
addict and highly opinionated individual, had no problem passing myself
off as a professorial if not professional expert in the area.

Afterwards I figured out how they got my name and why they mistakenly thought
I was an expert in international terrorism, but by then it was too late.
I started getting more calls, from the other TV channels, from the Herald,
even from Newsday in New York.

When a TV station wanted to film an interview, I would tell them to stop
by my office at Harvard. In actuality at that time my “Office” was a messy
conference room on the sixth floor of Sever Hall which I shared with 15
other ESL teachers, but I arranged to meet them in a book-lined corner
of the Sever library, where I would sit in a big leather armchair, wave
a borrowed pipe and pontificate on the sorry lack of anti-terrorist awareness.

They always asked the same questions, and I always gave the same answers.
The ominous closing inquiry was always, "So, Prof. Feldman, do you think
there will be more of these attacks in the future?".

"Absolutely. Indubiously. Undoubtedly". I figured if there were no more
attacks it wouldn’t be news and so no one would remember what I had predicted;
if there
were future attacks it would make me look prescient.

I’m not sure which of the news organizations finally did their homework
and figured out that I was closer to being a terrorist than a terrorism
expert, but the interview requests gradually dried up. By the time the
terrorists got serious, I was off of the watch list.

However, I haven’t given up. My predictions WERE prescient, and I hear
there are big bucks in the anti-terrorism expert business these days. However,
this time I think I will bypass the University Public Affairs Office. Send
interview requests directly to the Dowbrigade.