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Fall 2004 Departments
Exchange
Around the Pond
Great Sport
Arts
Books
Foundation News
Connections
Extended Family
Zip 01003
Features
The Future's So Bright
The Prince of Pages
The Changing Face of Beauty
Campaigns: Good for What Ails Us?
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Extended Family
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A Delicate Balance
Master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund–Kenneth Feinberg
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–Neil Swidey
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Kenneth R. Feinberg ’67, master of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. |
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HE WAS A LOUSY STUDENT at Brockton High School who blossomed at UMass Amherst. His transformation was so dramatic that Kenneth R. Feinberg ’67, a history major active in student theater, was chosen to deliver the student commencement address to his fellow graduating seniors. He went on to earn his law degree from New York University and work as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, chief of staff for Senator Edward Kennedy, and mediator for some of the knottiest cases in the legal system.
But Feinberg received his toughest assignment just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, when Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed him special master of the Victim Compensation Fund. Feinberg was given remarkable discretion in administering the fund and the unenviable task of assigning dollar figures to human lives.
Criticized at first by some families who found him brusque, he eventually won over even his toughest critics, with his tirelessness (he served without a salary) and his empathy. UMass Amherst and Feinberg are currently exploring the possibility of establishing the Feinberg Institute for the Comparative Value of Human Value and Public Life, a program focusing on the study of how societies place values on human life.
In the end, the fund paid out nearly $7 billion to families. Feinberg recently spoke about his experiences with Neil Swidey, a Boston Globe writer who profiled him in The Boston Globe Magazine in February.
Q&A
UMass: What have you learned about the relationship between compensation and healing?
KF: Compensation is a pretty hollow life preserver for families who have suffered so much. It may provide a certain degree of psychological closure. But I don’t oversell the notion that money provided by this fund is going to be a salve that will put people back on their feet.
UMass: Should the families of soldiers and other Americans killed in Iraq receive the same kind of compensation as 9/11 families?
KF: The loss in Iraq is a horrible thing, but it’s not a unique compensation scheme. Soldiers killed in harm’s way—unfortunately that’s been happening for a long time. The impact of 9/11 on the domestic civilian population as a whole is quite different.
UMass: In the end, what did 9/11 families want most from you?
KF: An opportunity to voice their sorrow, and be heard.
UMass: Initially, you were criticized most strongly by the more affluent families. How did you ultimately handle those claims?
KF: I reduced them substantially. I didn’t do that with any sense that I’m right in any absolute terms. I’m comfortable based on the statute and based on the discretion that Congress wanted me to exercise to try to narrow the gap between higher-end and lower-end beneficiaries of the fund. But in absolute terms, I’m troubled by my refusal to accept an argument from a spouse who says, “We planned a certain financial future and I’m entitled to receive more money to make sure that future is assured.” I’m not prepared to tell a family what they need and don’t need.
UMass: Anything you would go back and do differently, if you could?
KF: At the very beginning, I should have been more empathetic to the emotional needs of 3,000 families. I vastly underestimated the emotion associated with the program.
UMass: Is that a lesson you will integrate into your regular job as a high-profile mediator?
KF: Yes. A mediator cannot simply look at the merits of a case and discount the emotion that the parties bring to the discussion, which can color their view of the merits.
UMass: What else is on your plate now?
KF: I will be writing a report on the 9/11 program for the attorney general and Congress. And I’ve started writing a book that will focus on the lessons learned from the fund. Grief, anger, frustration, disappointment, hope, love.
UMass: What’s the most important lesson you take away from this assignment?
KF: Be careful about planning more than a week ahead. Life has a strange way of throwing curve balls at you. I’m much more fatalistic after this experience.
UMass: Why?
KF: Three thousand people died. They went to work that morning never expecting this. And 3,000 families had their lives ripped asunder.
FUND FACTS
Total number of eligible death claims: 2,880
Average death award: $2.081 million
Median death award: $1.677 million
Highest death award: $7.1 million
Total number of eligible personal
injury claims: 2,678
Range in award size for injury claims:
$500 to $8.598 million
Grand total of awards paid out to date:
$7.037 billion
Total number of hearings held: 3,526
Number of hearings Feinberg personally
presided over: 867
http://www.thefeinberggroup.com/
http://www.usdoj.gov/victimcompensation/payments_injury.html |
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[top of page]
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In Memoriam
A Delicate Balance
A Delicate Balance: larger image
Souvenir
Souvenir: more images
Destination Divas
Destination Divas: larger image
Woman, Interrupted
Woman, Interrupted: larger image
A Long Strange Trip
A Long Strange Trip: more images
It's Hip to Be Happy
It's Hip to Be Happy: larger image
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