Morrow joined '' Time '' in 1965 after a brief stint with the old '' Washington Star '' . As a reporter , he covered the 1967 Detroit race riots , the Vietnam War , the Nixon administration and the Watergate scandal . He also has penned several of '' Time '' 's " Man of the Year " articles . In 1976 , Morrow became a regular writer of '' Time '' 's backpage essay . He won the National Magazine Award for his essays in Time in 1981 , was a finalist for the award in 1991 ( for an essay cover on the subject of evil ) , and was among the Time writers who won the award in 2001 , for their coverage of September 11 ( in a special issue that closed on the afternoon of the September 11 attacks . Morrow contributed the essay for that issue ) . In his award winning September 11 essay , " The Case for Rage and Retribution " he wrote : " A day can not live in infamy without the nourishment of rage . Let 's have rage ... Let America explore the rich reciprocal possibilities of the fatwa . A policy of focused brutality does not come easily to a self-conscious , self-indulgent , contradictory , diverse , humane nation with a short attention span . America needs to relearn a lost discipline , self-confident relentlessness and to relearn why human nature has equipped us all with a weapon ( abhorred in decent peacetime societies ) called hatred ... This is the moment of clarity . Let the civilized toughen up , and let the uncivilized take their chances in the game they started . " Morrow was a University Professor at Boston University from 1996 to 2006 , when he was asked to write the authorized biography of Henry Luce , the founder of '' Time '' magazine
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Lance Morrow