9/11: 20 Years Later

News subtitle

Faculty and students reflect on how the attacks shaped history and the world today.

Video
Lights from the September 11 memorial
Two columns of the light representing the fallen towers of the World Trade Center shine against the lower Manhattan skyline on the 19th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. (Video by Chris Johnson/Photo by AP) 

Whether they were working, in school, or not yet born, students and faculty say the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, continue to shape the world today.

Members of the War and Peace Fellows, a program run by the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, speak about the horrific loss of more than 3,000 lives, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the tension between liberty and security, the rise of Islamophobia, and the personal impact of 9/11 and its aftermath.

“It’s a memory that’s changing—its meaning is changing as time goes on even though it’s staying with us,” says Professor Benjamin Valentino, coordinator of the War and Peace Fellows program.

The video features Caleb Benjamin ’23; Jeffrey Friedman, associate professor of government; Babette Kania ’23; Sheila Milon ’22; and Valentino, chair of the department of government.

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