My predecessor as assistant master to the Public Affairs Residential College was a graduate student named Jon Bay. He was also the first instructor I worked for as a teaching assistant. Near the end of his political science class in Harris Hall 207, in fall 1997, he predicted that New York City would be nuked within the next 50 years because of Third World poverty and suffering.

It was the kind of flamboyant statement Bay loved to make. To hammer the point home, he even made it part of his multiple-choice final: “What city is most likely to be nuked off the face of the planet? A) New York; B) Washington; C) London” (It was amusing to watch the students who had only read the text, and missed the lecture, look up in a state of perfect confusion.)

Bay wasn’t Nostradamus. Like the best instructors, he was just highlighting something that we all know but prefer not to think about: We as Americans are so, so, sooooo much richer than the third world is. American per capita GDP in 2000 was around $28,800. Per capita GDP in Afghanistan is about $800. Half of Earth’s 6 billion inhabitants live on less than $2 a day. And while Americans express strong support for taking care of our own vulnerable, we are very cool to sending any support overseas. In fiscal year 2001, President Clinton requested about 0.11 percent of our GDP for foreign development and humanitarian aid.

Bay’s point was that, in the 21st century, this is no longer just a humanitarian concern. It affects our national security. As long as these disparities exist (that is, forever), and Americans are perceived as indifferent to them, there will always be some overseas who will hate us.

There will of course be those (and Osama Bin Laden may well be among this number) who will hate us for other reasons, including unjustified ones. It is popular in some circles to blame the United States for the suffering of Iraq’s citizens, but in my opinion the top three reasons at least for Iraq’s misery are still Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein.

So why should we give the Third World more money, if terrorist attacks like those of Sept. 11 may occur anyway? The reason is clear in the aftermath of New York and D.C.: We are going to need some of its leaders as strong allies, the good ones, the ones who realize they must take chief responsibility for their own development, but who could use more financial support from those already blessed with so much.

If the early struggles of the 21st century are going to be fought on the basis of superior information, we should try cultivating more goodwill among those most likely to be in the know. Again, it’s not even just a humanitarian concern anymore. It might help save American lives.

Jon Bay passed away two years ago. But I think, in the wake of Sept. 11, he would have liked to have reiterated his final words to that fall class: “Give money to poor nations, or we’re dead.” It is, as he would have rushed to add, just another theory to kick around. But it’s one worth thinking about especially hard these days.