An Academic Approach to the 10th Anniversary of 9/11

Re-posted with permission from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

In the rightly placed memorials to the victims of 9/11 this last week, was an academic take on the 10-year anniversary by three Harvard faculty, organized by the Outreach Center at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and co-sponsored by the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program. I found the panel on Thursday 8 September to be unique from other public discussions of the tragedy. Those I have found to be either rooted in remembrance of loved ones lost, or political discussions of motives and impacts of the attacks and their rippling effects. As an organizer of the panel, I had thought to hold it originally on the date of remembrance, Sunday 11 September 2011. However, in considering that, it became clear that the core mission of the panel, to critically examine from three academic disciplines 10 years on from 9/11, would be impossible on such a solemn day. 10 years after, the attacks continue to create not only new victims but also new stories of communities impacted.

We organized the talk as way to unpack some the density of the last 10 years and to make sense of it for the way forward. Three faculty, Professor Jocelyne Cesari, Director, Islam in the West Program and the Islamopedia Project; Research Associate, Center for Middle Eastern Studies; Senior Research Fellow, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris; Professor Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Harvard Law School; and Dr. Charlie Clements, Executive Director, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School provided a panel. Of the 65 or so in attendance the majority were not students but members of the community, which I found unexpected. Perhaps the reality that the incoming class of Harvard was only 8 years old when 9/11 occurred has something to say about it. What struck me in the talk by the panel was the way in which each member combined a disciplined academic criticism of the last 10 years, and its policies, actions and impacts on the globe. They focused on, among other things, religious understanding, conceptions of Americanism, legal jurisprudence, and the connection to other past tragedies in America's history. It was one of the best talks I have heard at Harvard and did fitting justice to the idea of public academic discussion, that is in some ways at the heart of the Outreach Center mission, taking the research and teaching on the region out of the university.

For more information on the talk contact pberan@fas.harvard.edu. Paul Beran directs the Outreach Center at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.

Click here for a write up on the event by the Harvard Gazette.

Click here to watch video of the panel.