John Butler, assistant professor of communications, opened the fall semester of “NIU Notables” speaker series yesterday with a presentation about Sept. 11 and the rhetoric of war.

A group of about 50 people gathered to see Butler’s presentation, titled “The Rhetorical Road to Afghanistan: Constructing the ‘New’ Enemy.”

In his lecture, Butler talked about President Bush’s speeches from the days following Sept. 11. Butler said the rhetoric used by the president has stifled debate and led to a nationalist response to what should be an international issue. He hopes to encourage debate about the current war on terrorism.

“It’s a very important thing to do; to have intellectual discussion about where we’ve gone in the last year in terms of constructing an enemy,” Butler said.

Butler said it is not too late to reevaluate the tactics the Bush administration is using in its current campaign against terrorism.

“It’s happened before where the U.S. president has come to the American people and said ‘OK, this is more complicated than we thought and we’re going to have to do a better job of figuring out what’s going on here,’” Butler said. “I think that could be the start. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, though.”

Better solutions to the problem of terrorism will have to be developed by the international community, Butler said.

“It would have to be a conscientious international effort to discuss the causes and consequences of Sept. 11,” Butler said. “And I think the UN can facilitate that in the same way that they facilitate discussions on the status of women. The same way they talk about the environment, they can talk about terrorism.”

Arlene Neher, director of external programming for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was pleased by the audience’s attendance and response.

“We typically have about 30 people at a lecture,” Neher said. “We’ve had 80 or 90 in the past. It just depends on the topic.”

“NIU Notables” is organized by NIU’s Institute for Learning in Retirement, a project of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. It has organized “Notables” events for about a year and a half. Having the college’s first event of the fall semester on Sept. 11 presented a good opportunity, Neher said.

“We have a regularly scheduled Wednesday lecture and it happened to fall on Sept. 11,” Neher said. “And when we were looking at this date, we wanted to do something that was related to the date.”

Bringing in speakers is only part of what the ILR does. They also has study groups on topics ranging from International Cinema to Islam for non-Muslims.

More details on ILR programs are available on its Web site, www.niu.edu/ilr.