I am disturbed by the reference in Editor Norman Boucher’s summary of Ruth Simmons’s accomplishments to “a decade when the very security of our country is threatened in a new and unpredictable way.” (Here & Now, “The Last Waltz, July/August”)

If this statement is aimed at internal threats such as our current political paralysis, okay, but if it’s fear mongering about external threats once again, then, sorry, I have to gag since, using my Brown education, I have read George Orwell. Why have sometimes intelligent people bought into the notion that the 9/11 terrorists created a new reality more compelling than democracy, when in fact terrorists are terrorists the world over and throughout history, and only screaming fools would ever descend to their level the way we have.
    

John Escher ’61
Grosse Point Farms, Mich.
jgescher@comcast.net