Why september 11 is important

Image credit: Rod Searcey. When they showed up to their respective classrooms — at the time, Crenshaw was at Wesleyan University teaching a course on decision making and foreign policy; Zegart at UCLA — they found them packed. Students — horrified and trying to make sense of what was happening — sought clarity and comfort from their teachers, who just happened to be experts on the issues that would come to define the next two decades of U.

Students wanted to know more about the terms and names they were hearing for the first time that day, like jihadism and the Taliban.

Over the months that followed came more complex challenges to explain: the global war on terror, torture, rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few years after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq broke out, Zegart remembers one of her students, a recently returned veteran, telling her that he was taking her intelligence class because he wanted to learn more about why he had gone to Iraq, and what his friend who had deployed with him had died fighting for.

Perceptions began to shift. So much so that Zegart now finds herself in the opposite predicament: How to insert those feelings back in. There are also scenes of people fleeing lower Manhattan amid dust, smoke and debris. Zegart then asks her students to imagine they are policymakers at the White House and have to decide what to do next.

A key part of understanding history is empathy, and thinking about what it was like to live through something rather than only looking at an event through the distance of time. Through the exercise, students get a sense of the urgency that policymakers, like Rice, have to grapple with while making decisions amid a national emergency.

For example, in her course Political Science Middle Eastern Politics , several classes are dedicated to examining anti-American attitudes in the Islamic world and the conditions under which individuals become radicalized.

Lisa Blaydes, a professor of political science and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, focuses on comparative politics and politics of the Middle East. Image credit: Courtesy Lisa Blaydes.

On the 10th anniversary, the evaluation had turned negative, and on the 20th anniversary, even more so. Table 2: Compared to the situation before September 11, , do you think the country today is safer or less safe from terrorism?

William A. Galston Ezra K. Binder and Molly E. The public also did not rule out the use of torture to extract information from terrorist suspects.

In a survey of 40 nations, the U. Concerned about a possible backlash against Muslims in the U. Bush gave a speech to the Islamic Center in Washington, D. This spirit of unity and comity was not to last.

Republicans, in particular, increasingly came to associate Muslims and Islam with violence. But within the next few years, most Republicans and GOP leaners said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence. Democrats consistently have been far less likely than Republicans to associate Islam with violence. The partisan gap in views of Muslims and Islam in the U. For example, a survey found that half of U.

Surveys of U. Muslims from found increasing shares saying they have personally experienced discrimination and received public expression of support. It has now been two decades since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93 — where only the courage of passengers and crew possibly prevented an even deadlier terror attack. For most who are old enough to remember, it is a day that is impossible to forget.

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Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. Boston University More Publications. The Brink. September 8, BU Today staff. Twitter Facebook. I feel bad for all the families that had family and friends die. I wonder how much time people had to get out before the building collapsed.

Yes but it didnt colapse untill 56 minutes after it was hit.