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THE INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA • FOUNDED 1885

PHILADELPHIA, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2026

VOL. CXLII

NO. 20

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER Conversations with those who were on campus that day offer a firsthand account of how news of America’s deadliest terror attack reached Penn

BY PHOEBE ANAGNOS Sept. 11, 2001, began as a “perfect day,” Jack Nagel recalls. Later, he watched “these planes against the sky and the horrors that followed.” At 8:46 a.m., the first hijacked plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Nagel — who, at the time, was serving as the chair of Penn’s Political Science department — was sitting in his Stiteler Hall office when a colleague drew his attention to a small television. He remembers wondering whether the first collision could have been an accident. News spread throughout campus unevenly, disseminating through television and radio reports in dorm rooms, frantic calls from family members, and announcements from professors who paused their lectures to provide updates. As the scale of the attacks on the twin towers and Pentagon became clear, Penn canceled afternoon classes, tightened campus security, and transformed Houston Hall into an on-campus crisis center. Twenty-five years later, conversations with those who taught, reported, and cared for students that day offer a firsthand account of how news of America’s deadliest terror attack reached campus — and how Penn responded. *** Ian Lustick, a Political Science professor at the

time, was at home when his phone rang. A reporter was calling to ask for his assessment of the attack. “What attack?” Lustick recalled asking. The reporter told him to turn on the television. Then a faculty member at Northwestern University, Penn President Larry Jameson happened to be visiting the University that morning for a meeting. When he stepped out for a moment to call his wife and wish her a happy birthday, she asked if he had seen the news. “I had no idea what was happening until she told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center,” Jameson wrote in a statement. He rushed back into the meeting and told his colleagues. They gathered around a television to watch the news. At 9:03 a.m., the second plane struck the South Tower. At that point, “we knew it wasn’t an accident,” Nagel recalled. The second strike instantly changed how people understood what they were witnessing, recalled Ilene Rosenstein, who directed Penn’s Counseling and Psychological Services for 18 years. “In the beginning it was shock and confusion. People didn’t know if this was just an airplane See 9/11, page 3

ANDY MEI | DESIGN EDITOR

9/11 still influences life at Penn, a quartercentury later The impact of the attacks still reverberates through campus, reshaping everything from security to academic curricula ARTI JAIN Senior Reporter

It has been 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001. A quarter-century since the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil, much of the world has transformed in the shadow of that day. Faculty members and policy experts say the effects of the attacks still reverberate through Penn’s campus, reshaping everything from security practices to academic curricula. Penn had started working on a crisis management plan prior to 9/11, according to Vice President of Public Safety Kathleen Shields Anderson. Those plans, however, were made more urgent by the attacks. That summer, the University established an “Emergency Preparedness Plan” that included tailored preparations for each school and center. According to Chief of Fire and Emergency Services Eugene Janda, each location’s plans are shared with fire and police departments so they can “quickly get access to the information they need about that building in case of an emergency.” For events that draw large crowds — such as graduation, Convocation, and The Penn Relay Carnival — the attacks fundamentally transformed the University’s approach to security. Penn began working with the Philadelphia Police Department’s Ordnance Disposal Unit and bomb unit, and collaborated with the City of Philadelphia, Amtrak, and SEPTA police to conduct sweeps of the area. Currently, Janda said, the department assesses threats based on “situational awareness.” Prior to the attacks, the University also did not maintain an active K-9 unit, Chief of Police for the Penn Police Department Derrick Wood said in an interview. As of 2025, the Penn Vet Working Dog Center has graduated nearly 200 detection dogs. Frank Plantan, an international relations lecturer emeritus at Penn who also received a Ph.D. from the University, said that potential security risks at the University prompted the installation of surveillance cameras across a campus. “There had been massive resistance by students and faculty to closed-circuit TV cameras,” he said. “Penn Security had been trying to put them on campus for years — then after 9/11, the resistance to that broke down.” According to Anderson, the expansion of CCTV cameras began well before Sept. 11, 2001. See IMPACT, page 3

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Federal policy changes endanger career plans, international students say

The future of CAR T-cell cancer research at Penn

For some students, new guidelines reinforce a growing belief that working in the United States is increasingly out of reach

Nearly 10 years after the Food and Drug Administration approved the first CAR T-cell therapy, researchers are exploring new frontiers for the technology

RIANA MAHTANI Senior Reporter

As the Trump administration weighs stricter immigration guidelines, international students at Penn say the mounting uncertainty is already reshaping their career plans. The anxiety stems from a flurry of recent federal proposals that could alter work authorization policies, including a reported $100,000 fee on Optional Practical Training, which allows international graduates to work in the United States after graduation. For some students, the developments reinforce a growing belief that the path to working in the United States has become increasingly out of reach. A senior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science — who requested anonymity for fear of retribution — explained in an interview that only a limited number of employers in high-paying industries can sponsor visas. Those firms, he said, “do not have $100,000 to sponsor your H-1B visa,” which “limits your options to a very great degree.” According to another student, who was also granted anonymity, that trade-off can happen quickly once you arrive on campus. The student — a junior in the Engineering School — decided to recruit for consulting jobs because they offered better sponsorship prospects than other roles. “I really, really wanted to stay in the U.S., and I knew consulting could offer me that in an easier way,” she said

in an interview. “The career you choose to do post-grad is kind of affected by whether you can find a company that can sponsor you. You just have to weigh it and decide what you want more: staying in the States or just pursuing the career path you want.” College junior Anouchka Fabert said that the pressure has only intensified as she nears a decision about her career. She had originally intended to return to Europe after graduation but now wants to work in health technology, an industry she says has far more opportunities in cities like New York and San Francisco. “I’m starting to know what I want to do — and at the same time, I’m starting to find out that I can’t do it,” she explained. Fabert said that the common response from many international students is to “just ignore for now” and “hope that somehow it gets figured out by the time you have to deal with it for real.” STEM students are granted a three-year OPT window, while those in other disciplines receive only one year. The Engineering senior said the disparity has left many of his friends with humanities degrees struggling to find work after graduation. The Engineering junior encountered a different obstacle when she nearly lost her Curricular Practical Training authorization over a summer consulting See POLICY, page 6

EBUNOLUWA ADESIDA | SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

In August, Penn ISSS announced that the University would temporarily pause new and pending applications for CPT.

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OPINION Guest columnist Barbie Zelizer reflects on the impact of 9/11 on journalism

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MARIACRISTINA CALCAGNO Staff Reporter

When chemotherapy failed to stave off the cancer cells living in her body, 6-year-old Emily Whitehead was left with one option. Nearly a year earlier, Whitehead was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a blood cancer that chemotherapy successfully treats in most patients. But two relapses meant that Whitehead, who was seeking care at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, would need to find an alternative. At the time, researchers at Penn Medicine had spent over a decade developing CAR T-cell therapies for cancer — an approach where a patient’s natural attacker T cells, not recognizing the cancer cells, are removed from the body and engineered to include a chimeric antigen receptor that can recognize the cancer cells. By 2010, the researchers had treated the first adult patient with the therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. But before Whitehead, now a College senior, no child had received the novel treatment. In 2012, she became the first pediatric patient to receive T-cell therapy. She has not relapsed since. Five years later, the first CAR T-cell therapy, pioneered by a collaboration between Penn and pharmaceutical company Novartis, was approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration for acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children. This past summer, China’s National Medical Products Administration approved the world’s first CAR T-cell therapy for the treatment of a solid tumor. Despite clinical trials — partly led by a Penn startup — the technology has yet to be approved to treat solid tumors in the United States. The Daily Pennsylvanian spoke with Penn researchers about where that progress currently stands and what they’re doing to overcome barriers. “The big difference between liquid tumors and solid tumors is, in solid tumors, you basically have a new organ forming,” School of Veterinary Medicine Cancer Center Director Ellen Puré said. Perelman School of Medicine Department of Microbiology professor Joseph Fraietta compared the solid tumor microenvironment to a “sewer.” “CAR T cells have to function within that sewer,” he said. “Even if they can get past these very formidable physical barriers and infiltrate into the tumor bed, in the tumor microenvironment, they’re met with various sundry immunosuppressive mechanisms.” Puré added that while immunosuppressive cells form See CANCER, page 6

SPORTS Field hockey’s Ellie Almeida wouldn’t want to compete anywhere else. It’s hard to imagine Penn without her