A few hours before mandatory evacuation was declared in Orleans Parish my wife, son, dog and I left the city along with my elderly parents who happened to be in town visiting us. This particular evacuation was a success with excellent traffic contraflow plans in place. Despite the inevitable traffic delays and problems with gas, despite the lack of hotel reservations and the uncertainties of finding a shelter for the night, we were among those fortunate to have had the means to leave the city before Katrina hit the coast. We eventually watched the destruction on TV and heard of the levee breaks with stunned dismay from the relative safety of a hotel room in Jackson, MS. Then Katrina howled through Jackson, we lost power and found ourselves fleeing west. Feeling the force of the gale that rattled the seventh floor of our hotel room, we could only wonder what it must have been like before its fury was tamed to a Category One.

In the next few weeks as we watched the coverage, we found ourselves on an emotional roller coaster, veering between anger, fear, sorrow, and shock over the meltdown in the city, pride in the doctors and nurses who fought desperately to save lives, and admiration for all those individuals who spontaneously did what they could in the rescue efforts. Closer to home, we were desperately trying to track down friends and colleagues and trying to let others know that we were safe. With cell phones and landlines down, the university server unavailable, and no other practical means of communication, a text message from a friend “Safe in Dallas. U OK?” would bring tears of the kind I had never been prepared to shed. After the initial numbness had waned and some contact established with friends, inevitable questions of basic economic survival sent a chill down our spines –How had the university fared? Would local banks survive? Would we be paid? Did we still have jobs? What about health insurance? These are questions, which, unlike many in the corporate and service sector, tenured scholars are generally unprepared to face. If tenured jobs were at issue, what of those who were adjuncts, visitors, and staff? What about the stipends of graduate students on fellowships and ABDs teaching courses as adjuncts? And where would the thousands of students in schools and colleges across the affected areas be relocated?

The immediate generosity of many academic institutions mitigated the crisis of interrupted education. We ourselves came to Austin, where my wife had done her graduate degree in English, and were instantly welcomed by the University of Texas, which had already admitted students from the affected areas, a move multiplied by other universities. Our son, likewise, was admitted into a school comparable to his own in New Orleans within a matter of minutes. The unstinting warmth and support of educators and of the general public was a huge buffer against the pain of dislocation. In these weeks, we learned lessons in model community and fellowship that we hope never to forget. As temporarily displaced people, we came to appreciate the real meaning of hospitality along with thousands of others across the states who host the New Orleans diaspora.

If there is one crucial lesson we have learned, it is that no university is an island. When the city went down, so did we, even if Tulane’s campus was not as catastrophically affected as other parts of the city. The well-being of the city is pragmatically necessary for the survival of the university, so even those of us who separate academics from civic service, community engagement, and local leadership—from the grime and grit of politics and urban infrastructure —may have to rethink our isolation. We are beginning to have more active discussions about how the university can be directly engaged in the rebuilding of the city—from breached levees to broken public education, from shortsighted environmental and development policies to poverty and racial stereotypes.

While the hurricane destroyed or disrupted a lot of lives, it has also opened up new possibilities for collaboration and new strategies for thinking about the education of our students. An important part of this will be a more directed effort to relate the educational and research priorities of our universities with the new challenges faced by the city and the region as a whole. Administrators at Tulane and other area institutions such as Dillard, Xavier, and Loyola have signed agreements with each other to find avenues of sharing resources as we move ahead. And if the first week of classes are any indication, our students are ready to dedicate their efforts in whatever ways they can to help rebuild the city. I find inspiration in them.

- Gaurav Desai, faculty, English Department