As the Duke community commemorated the events of 9/11, University luminaries gathered to discuss the myriad questions the attack has sparked in the last decade.
The symposium, “Did 9/11 Change Anything? Everything?” featured a series of panel discussions Friday on a number of issues, including religious and cultural tolerance of Islam, America’s perception in the western world and the constitutionality of the War on Terror. Panel participants included a number of notable Duke faculty, such as Bruce Jentleson, professor of public policy and political science and former director of the Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Abdullah Antepli, the University’s Muslim chaplain, and Miriam Cooke, professor of Asian and Middle Eastern studies.
“We recognize that 9/11 was a single event not just in American history, but… in the lives of the students at Duke,” said Peter Feaver, Alexander F. Hehmeyer professor of political science, who spoke in the “How We Look at the World” panel. “For many of our students, it would be the first national security event that they were aware of…. In some ways, they are the 9/11 generation.”
The discussions were held in conjunction with a series of other events being held by Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. The symposium was co-sponsored by institutions at all three universities—eight from Duke.
“We’re here commemorating the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,” said David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center of Terrorism and Homeland Security and associate professor of the practice for public policy, at the event. “Many of us remember it very vividly, and of course we’re commemorating the people who were lost that day.”
Schanzer added that one of the best ways to commemorate 9/11 at universities is to consider its historical and political consequences.
In part of the discussion, Antepli noted the need for mutual cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims in America to understand each other, and how 9/11 affected this relationship.
“There is no doubt that 9/11 made our society… shy away from a relaxed attitude and gave rise to… exclusive patriotism and chauvinism, which is worrisome,” Antepli said. “After 9/11 I think for many people [who] knew nothing about Islam… it has been a great learning curve.”
Later in the panel, Jentleson addressed how the attack changed American perceptions of security.
“What [9/11] really meant—more than anything that had happened before—was that the threat was [no longer] out there but in here,” he said.
Cooke conversely discussed the way the Muslim world perceives America and the relationship between the two cultures.
“In general, there is a huge difference between the way in which Arabs in particular look at American people as opposed to the American government,” Cooke said. “I think that, in some ways, what has been going on has been—if not a confusion—a reduction of U.S. foreign policy and Americans.”
The panels attracted an audience of undergraduate students, graduate students, professors and members of the local community.
Freshman Steven Davidson was one of a handful of his classmates at the symposium.
“I definitely got some new perspectives on how wide-ranging the effects of 9/11 were in foreign policy, in our daily lives and how the general atmosphere of the world changed,” Davidson said.
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