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Teaching Ideas

10 Ways to Teach About 9/11 With The New York Times

Ideas for helping students think about how the Sept. 11 attacks have changed our nation and world.

By Nicole Daniels and Michael Gonchar

Sept. 11, 2001 , is one of those rare days that, if you ask most adults what they remember, they can tell you exactly where they were, whom they were with and what they were thinking. It is a day seared in memory. But for students who were born in a post- 9/11 world and have grown up in the aftermath, it is complex history that needs to be remembered, taught and analyzed like any other historical event.

Twenty years ago, four commercial planes were hijacked by operatives from the radical Islamist group Al Qaeda. One plane was flown into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and two others were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A fourth hijacked plane crashed in Shanksville, Pa. Almost 3,000 people died that day, including more than 400 emergency workers.

In the wake of those attacks, the United States initiated a global “war on terror” to destroy Al Qaeda — a campaign that expanded into decades-long wars in Afghanistan, Iraq (even though Iraq was not responsible for Sept. 11 ) and elsewhere. In the wake of Sept. 11, the United States changed in other fundamental ways as well, from increased police surveillance to a rise in Islamophobia .

Below, we provide a range of activities that use resources from The New York Times, including archival front pages and photographs, first-person accounts, and analysis pieces published for the 20th anniversary . But we also suggest ideas borrowed from other education organizations like the Choices Program , RetroReport , the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and the Newseum .

On Sept. 30, we are hosting a free event, featuring Times journalists, for students that will look at how Sept. 11 has shaped a generation of young people who grew up in its aftermath. Teachers and students can register here , and students can submit their own videos with questions, many of which we hope to feature during the live event.

1. Reflect on What 9/11 Means to You

In the essay “ What Does It Mean to ‘Never Forget’? ,” Dan Barry writes:

Inevitably, someday there will be no one alive with a personal narrative of Sept. 11. Inevitably, the emotional impact of the day will fade a little bit, and then a little bit more, as time transforms a visceral lived experience into a dry history lesson. This transformation has already begun; ask any high school history teacher.

Or, ask any student. They are at the center of the transition that Mr. Barry describes.

Invite students to respond to one or more of the following questions, and share their responses with other students from around the world by responding to our related Student Opinion question :

What does Sept. 11 mean to you? Is it mostly a “dry history lesson” or does it resonate for you in deeper ways?

What do you know about the events that took place on Sept. 11? Where and how did you learn about them?

What questions do you have about that day and what happened next?

Have the events of Sept. 11 and its aftermath affected you personally in any way? If so, how? How do you think they may have shaped your generation as a whole?

Note: To ensure your class has a shared understanding of what happened on Sept. 11, you might want to have students watch this two-minute video or scroll through this interactive timeline , both created by the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Alternatively, students can watch this five-minute video from the History Channel which is focused on the attacks at the World Trade Center.

2. Interview Someone Who Remembers

Although teenagers today are too young to have their own personal memories of Sept. 11, people they know and love do. The Choices Program at Brown University has created a lesson plan that walks students through the process of conducting an interview about Sept. 11 with someone they know while also considering the importance of oral history.

The accompanying student handout suggests questions that students may want to ask, such as: What were you doing on Sept. 11, 2001? How did you find out about the attacks?

After conducting their interviews, students can share what they have learned in small groups and with the class. They might even create an oral history book or site that they can share with future classes.

For inspiration or as mentor texts, students can take a look at this “Revisiting the Families” collection of short follow-up interviews and articles that Times reporters did to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks. It offers small glimpses of those who lost family members, and of their lives since.

3. Revisit History’s First Draft

Newspapers have been described as “history’s first draft.” Reporters and editors from around the world who published on the morning of Sept. 12 had less than a day to figure out how to make sense of what happened for their readers.

Invite students to look closely at the New York Times front page (or the full paper ) from that day. They can click on the individual articles as well. What do they notice? What questions does the front page bring up for them? What do they learn about coverage on that first day?

Then they can investigate front pages from other newspapers from around the world and across the country. The Newseum (you’ll need to create a free account) provides images of front pages of over 100 newspapers from dozens of cities — from Anchorage and Richmond, Va., to Turku, Finland, and Osaka, Japan. Business Insider compiled some of the images from the Newseum’s archival, to show what the front pages of newspapers from around the world looked like on Sept. 12 .

Students can choose three or four front pages and take note of the similarities and differences that they see in coverage; what choices might they have made had they been editors that day; and what additional questions these front pages raise for them.

4. Look Closely at Archival Photos

Photographs can be a powerful and accessible way for students to learn more about what happened on and after Sept. 11. Students can study the New York Times photo collection “ The Towers’ Rise and Fall ,” which was originally published on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, to see what stories these 72 images tell about the World Trade Center, the terrorist attacks and the aftermath.

Students can closely investigate two or three images using our What’s Going On in This Picture? protocol from Visual Thinking Strategies :

What is going on in this picture?

What do you see that makes you say that?

What more can you find?

Or, you can invite students to take on the role of curator in a museum who is creating an exhibit about Sept. 11 in New York. They can choose only six to eight photographs to tell the story. Which images would they select and why?

5. Listen to and Read First-Person Stories

Students can watch one or more of the three-minute videos from the “ Portraits Redrawn ” series that was created by The Times for the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. The six videos are all interviews with people who had a family member die in the attacks.

They can watch this 10-minute video from VICE in which a civilian mariner talks about assisting with the world’s largest boat lift that rescued half a million people from Lower Manhattan.

They can also watch this 12-minute RetroReport video that features interviews with emergency workers who survived the attacks at the World Trade Center and do all or part of this related lesson plan (and student activity ).

Or, students can read this article about a survivor navigating life with post-traumatic stress disorder after the attack on the World Trade Center.

After watching or reading, they can consider: What have you learned about Sept. 11 by hearing stories of survivors, families and people who died in the attacks? And, how do first-person stories change, or deepen, your understanding of what happened?

6. Consider the Importance of Memory

Op-docs: where the towers stood, the world trade center wreckage once smoldered here. now visitors come from around the world to learn, remember and grieve the loss of 9/11..

[somber music playing] [airplane engine] See it? Yeah. Am I just seeing things? Oh, jeez. Oh, they’re people. Oh. Oh, jeez, they’re people. They’re people. They’re people. [quiet music playing] I’m going to take us right here to this tree where there in shade and there is sun, so you could have which ever you prefer. So we don’t get in everyone’s way, if we can stay over here on the left hand side, we’ll be in good shape. The memorial is designed for you to make physical contact with it, to actually touch the names. So do not feel that the appropriate behavior that shows respect is to be standoffish. It is not. The only thing that we do ask — and I really doubt that any of you would have the impulse to do this anyhow — do not put things on the name. Coats, elbows, cups, bags, anything like that. The other thing I want to say to you is this was truly — you’re an international group of people — this was the World Trade Center. People from over 90 countries died here that morning. They were Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists. Some made their way in the world washing dishes, others ran powerful companies, but almost every single one of them dies that morning because they do something that all of us do with most of our lives — they woke up and they went to work. [somber music playing] Excuse me. Hello. Hello, hello, hello. There’s no smoking in the plaza. No smoking in the plaza. That’s quite all right. Thank you. So I want to talk to you about the pools. Directly in front of you is the south pool. The south pool stands in the footprint of the South Tower, World Trade Center number two. So that’s exactly where World Trade Center number two stood. Can everyone see that line of trees that goes around the pool? That line of trees represents the outer wall of the building. So that means in a few minutes when we go up to see the falls and you go past those trees, you will be standing in what was once the lobby of World Trade Center number two. You’re going to see the falls. The falls come out in individual rivulets, one for each person killed on 9/11. Goes down about 20 feet or so into a huge pool. In the center of the pool, another opening goes on another 10 feet or so. No matter how hard you try, you can’t see the bottom of that opening because it’s a void, and the void is a symbol of the emptiness that we feel here over the loss of life. I’m sure all of you can see the water under the names. That water comes directly from the pool. What someone will do, visiting a loved one — and please feel free to do the very, very same — take their hand, put it in the water, rub their hand over a name. Water, of course, a symbol of life. And notice how the names are on the wall. They are not arranged in alphabetical order. For example, people who worked in the same office in this building, they’re together. Firefighters out on the same firehouse, together. Police officers out of the same police precinct, together. We call that meaningful adjacencies. People together in death just the way they were together in life. I have a stupid question. The names of the killers. Are they — Absolutely not. Not. Absolutely not. Yeah. The only place you’ll find them is if you should go into the museum, there’s a special part that deals with Al Qaeda. [somber music playing] [water cascading] [somber music playing]

To learn more about the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, students can watch the above 18-minute video from our Film Club series. Then, they can respond to the questions below in writing or discussion.

What moments in this film stood out for you? Why?

Were there any surprises? Anything that challenged what you know — or thought you knew?

What messages, emotions or ideas will you take away from this film? Why?

What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?

Then, students can read a 2019 article about the opening of the 9/11 Memorial Glade in Lower Manhattan — a memorial for people, largely rescue and recovery workers, whose illnesses and deaths came years after Sept. 11, 2001.

After watching the video and reading the article, students can reflect on the following questions in a class discussion:

Why do we memorialize people or events? What purpose should a memorial serve?

What purpose does memorializing Sept. 11 serve? How do you think Sept. 11 can be most effectively or meaningfully memorialized?

What concerns or challenges should societies or organizations be mindful of when they create memorials? Why?

If you’re interested in furthering the conversation about the memorial in your class, the 9/11 Memorial and Museum has a collection of resources for teachers and students.

7. Evaluate International Repercussions

How the u.s. military response to the 9/11 attacks led to decades of war., officials who drove the decades-long war in afghanistan look back on the strategic mistakes and misjudgments that led to a 20-year quagmire..

Two decades after invading Afghanistan, the United States is withdrawing, leaving chaos in its wake and the country much as it found it 20 years ago. “The Taliban don’t just control Kabul, but the whole country.” How did a war that began in response to the 9/11 attacks become the longest in American history? “If somebody had told me in 2001 that we were going to be there for another 20 years, I would not have believed them.” And what lessons can be learned for the future? “We were doing the same thing year after year after year, expecting a different result.” “Nearly 2,400 Americans have died in Afghanistan.” “More than 43,000 Afghan civilians lost their lives.” “You can’t remake a country on the American image. You can’t win if you’re fighting people who are fighting for their own villages and their own territory. Those were lessons we thought we learned in Vietnam. And yet, 30, 40 years later, we end up in Afghanistan, repeating the same mistakes.” On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush was visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla., when he received word of an attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. “We’re looking at a live picture of the, of the building right now. And, uh, what would you say? That would be about the 90th floor or so?” The president joined his staff in an empty classroom, where his C.I.A. intelligence briefer, Michael Morell, had been watching the attack unfold. “There was a TV there and the second plane hit.” “Oh my goodness.” “Oh God.” “There’s another one.” “Oh.” “Oh my goodness, there’s another one.” “God.” “And when that happened, I knew that this was an act of terrorism.” At the Capitol in Washington, Representative Barbara Lee’s meeting was interrupted. “I heard a lot of noise saying, ‘Evacuate. Leave. Get out of here. Run fast.’ So, I ran up Independence Avenue. As I turned around, I was able to see a heck of a lot of smoke.” “Another aircraft, unbelievably, has crashed into the Pentagon.” “What you have to understand is this is the largest attack ever in the entire history of the country.” At 9:59 a.m., the second World Trade Center tower to be struck collapsed. Twenty-nine minutes later, the other tower followed. “The president, he asked to see me in his office on Air Force One. The president looked me in the eye and he said, ‘Michael, who did this?’ I told the president that I would bet my children’s future that Al Qaeda was responsible for this attack.” Within hours, evidence surfaced that Al Qaeda, a multinational terrorist organization headed by the Islamic fundamentalist Osama Bin Laden, had committed the attacks. The group was being given safe haven in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime. “The president’s inclination was to hit back and hit back hard.” “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people — ” “So the president decided to go to war.” “ — And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” “We had to go to Afghanistan. There’s no question in any of our minds, it’s a war of necessity. We had to go after Al Qaeda, we had to kill them, we had to get them out, and we had to pursue them to the ends of the earth.” “The word on the street was everyone’s got to be united with the president. You know, the country is in mourning.” Three days after the attacks, Lee was under pressure to vote yes on a resolution in Congress to authorize going to war against Al Qaeda and its allies when she heard a eulogy at a memorial service. “That as we act, we not become the evil we deplore.” “It was at that point I said, We need to think through our military response, our national security response and the possible impact on civilians.” “Mr. Speaker, members, I rise today really with a very heavy heart. One that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.” “Got back to the office and all hell was breaking loose.” “The only dissenting voice was Democrat Barbara Lee of California, voting no.” “Phone calls, threats. People were calling me a traitor. She’s got to go. But I knew then it was going to set the stage for perpetual war.” Within weeks of 9/11, the U.S. struck back in Afghanistan. “The United States military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime.” Soon after, U.S. ground troops arrived in the country. “The invasion was a success very quickly.” “At the gates of Kabul, news of a Taliban collapse had already reached these thousands.” “The Taliban retreat has turned into a rout.” “By the end of the year, the Taliban had been driven from power. A large number of Al Qaeda operatives had either been killed or captured.” And although Osama Bin Laden had managed to escape, the U.S. had accomplished its main goal. “Al Qaeda could not operate out of Afghanistan anymore.” President Bush knew there was a history of failed military campaigns in Afghanistan. “We know this from not only intelligence but from the history of military conflict in Afghanistan. It’s been one of initial success followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We’re not going to repeat that mistake.” [Applause] But after his initial success, Bush expanded the mission to nation-building. To prevent further Al Qaeda attacks, his administration said it wanted to transform the poor, war-torn country into a stable democracy, with a strong central government and U.S.-trained military. “The idea was it would be impossible for the Taliban to ever return to power and impossible for Afghanistan to ever be used as a safe haven again.” “There were girls starting to go to school, there were clinics and hospitals being set up, there were vaccinations, there were elections planned. Everything was kind of humming along and we all thought, OK, this is going to be fine.” But by the mid-2000s, after the Bush administration expanded the war on terror to Iraq, Richard Boucher realized that the U.S.-backed Afghan government was plagued by corruption and mismanagement. “I used to say to my guys on the Afghan desk, ‘If we’re winning, how come it don’t look like we’re winning?’” “The Taliban have staged a major comeback, seizing control of large swaths of the country.” “The people were not rejecting the Taliban. And that was, in the end, because the government couldn’t deliver much for the people. Everybody had this idea in their heads that government works the way it does in Washington. But Afghanistan hasn’t worked that way in the past. I think that was a moment we should’ve at least asked ourselves whether it wasn’t really time for us to leave and to say to the Afghans, ‘It’s your place, you run it as best you can.’” Instead, by 2011, President Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, had sent nearly 50,000 more troops to Afghanistan, hoping to reverse the Taliban’s gains. “I think one of the biggest mistakes we made strategically, after 9/11, was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here. We got distracted by Iraq.” One of those troops was Marine Captain Timothy Kudo. Part of his job was to shore up support for the government by digging wells and building schools. He soon lost faith in that mission after, he says, his company killed two Afghan teenagers they mistakenly believed were firing on them. “And their family saw this happen. The mothers, the grandmothers, they came out. It was the first time I’d ever seen an Afghan woman without wearing a burqa. They were sobbing and crying uncontrollably. I mean, how can you kill two innocent people and expect anything that you say to matter at that point?” “People here have little faith in U.S. forces anymore. More Afghans now blame the violence here on the U.S. than on the Taliban.” Weeks after Kudo returned home from Afghanistan, there was a monumental development. “I started getting all these texts, like, ‘You’ve got to check out the TV.’ My roommate calls me from the other room. ‘Turn on CNN.’” “The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda.” “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” “In that moment, people are celebrating in front of the White House. They’re celebrating by Ground Zero.” “This is where it happened. We’re back. It’s justice!” “And to my mind, there’s no more reason to go through this madness. And, of course, we then did it for another decade.” “I think the military and the national security apparatus thought they could win. And I think that they also wanted to believe that because they had invested so much. People had died and they didn’t want them to die in vain.” “2011, Bin Laden is now dead. Why was it so hard to de-escalate?” Jeffrey Eggers was on President Obama’s National Security Council. He says that the goal since 9/11, to make sure Afghanistan would never again be a safe haven for terrorists, had become a recipe for endless war. “We will forever prevent the conditions that led to such an attack.” “Danger close!” [Gunfire] “And if you define it that way, when are you finished?” [Gunfire] “Go! Come on, come on, come on!” Though the surge failed to push back the Taliban, the U.S. drew down troop levels even as doubts were growing that Afghan forces would be able to defend the country. In 2021, President Biden, the fourth president to preside over the war, announced that he would withdraw U.S. troops, a plan set in motion by his predecessor, Donald Trump. “Nobody should have any doubts. We lost the war in Afghanistan.” “And we’re clear to cross?” “It wasn’t a peace agreement; it was a withdrawal agreement. The agreement was essentially, As we withdraw, don’t attack us.” As the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, the Taliban is taking over again, having quickly overrun the Afghan Army, which the U.S. spent more than $80 billion to train and equip. “The Taliban are out in full force. And their Islamist rule is already coming back.” “They can use this as a recruiting tool. They are now the champions of the jihadi movement because they pushed out the United States.” And U.S. officials are reflecting on the beginning of the war, 20 years after 9/11. “More people should have thought about endless war, not just in Congress but in the State Department, in the Defense Department, C.I.A. and elsewhere, in the White House. That the recipe of using military means to go after terrorism was just going to get us into one fight after another after another. One can only hope that Americans of the new generation will think about this.”

In an address to Congress and the nation on Sept. 20, 2001, President George W. Bush made it clear that the response to the terrorist attacks would not be confined to a single military strike on one group, network or country: “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Help students uncover the motivation behind the attacks and evaluate the international repercussions of the “war on terror” using the following resources:

The Terrorist Attack : Who was responsible for the attacks on Sept. 11? Why did they target the United States, and particularly civilians? Britannica and USA Today each offer brief summaries of the plot and the roles of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. To go more in depth, you might have students watch the three-part documentary series “ Road to 9/11 ” from the History Channel, which provides a 360-degree overview of events that led to the attack.

To help students understand why the World Trade Center, Pentagon and U.S. Capitol were targeted, see the 9/11 Memorial and Museum lesson plan, “ Targeting American Symbols .”

The U.S. Response and the Global “War on Terror”: On Oct. 7, 2001, just weeks after the attacks, Mr. Bush announced that America had started a bombing campaign against Al Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks, and the Taliban, the group that harbored them in Afghanistan.

So began the longest war in American history, which ended this year with the removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. What did the war accomplish? Use our Lesson of the Day on “ The U.S. War in Afghanistan: How It Started, and How It Ended ” to have students evaluate the causes and consequences of the 20-year conflict. They can also watch the 10-minute RetroReport video (embedded above), which looks at the decisions that shaped the war. And, they can use our Lesson of the Day “ What Will Become of Afghanistan’s Post-9/11 Generation? ” about how the lives of young people in Afghanistan have suddenly changed with the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Beyond The Times, see the five-part lesson plan “ The Costs of War ,” created by the Choices Program, which examines the human, economic, social and political costs of the “war on terror” through videos and class discussions.

Veterans of the War in Afghanistan: Listen to voices of veterans in The Argument podcast episode “ You Don’t Bring Democracy at the Point of a Gun ” or read about their experiences in the essay “ Serving in a Twenty Year War .” How do these firsthand accounts and perspectives change how students understand the realities of the so-called war on terror? What questions would they ask these veterans if they were New York Times reporters?

After exploring one or more of the pieces in this section, students might discuss the prompts below:

What is terrorism? Why do some individuals and groups target civilians for political purposes?

Was the United States justified in using military force in Afghanistan after Sept. 11? What is the legacy of the “war on terror”? Has it made us safer?

What lessons can we learn from the war? How do you think the United States and other countries should work toward preventing future terrorist attacks? If the United States, or another country, were hit by foreign terrorism again in the future, how should we respond? What principles, critical questions and experiences should help us form our response?

8. Examine Ripple Effects in the United States

In the two decades since Sept. 11, many aspects of American life have changed, from travel and art to education and immigration . Your conversation with students about post-9/11 America could take on any one or many of these topics. Below, we suggest two possible lenses, based on recent Times texts, through which to examine the ripple effects in the United States:

Muslims in America : Invite students to read “ Muslim Americans’ ‘Seismic Change’ ” by Elizabeth Dias and consider how the aftermath of Sept. 11 has brought both challenges, including a surge in Islamophobia, but also possibilities for the Muslim American community, such as the election of Muslim Americans to Congress and award-winning television featuring Muslim American actors and stories, that would have been unfathomable 20 years ago.

Civil Liberties and Surveillance: Two decades after the attacks, police departments across the United States, and particularly the N.Y.P.D., are using counterterrorism tools, like facial recognition software, to combat routine street crime. Although police officials say these methods have helped thwart would-be attacks, others say they subject everyday people to “near-constant surveillance — a burden that falls more heavily on people of color.” Invite students to read “ How the N.Y.P.D. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday New Yorkers ” and debate the benefits and drawbacks of these tactics.

After reading one or both of these articles, students might discuss the following questions:

In what important ways has Sept. 11 transformed American life?

Did anything described in the articles connect with anything you’ve experienced, read or witnessed? How have these changes affected your life, whether you knew it or not?

What does America’s response to Sept. 11 say about the United States today?

9. Explore Why Conspiracy Theories Sometimes Flourish

Today’s students are often familiar with conspiracy theories and their popularity on social media. Here is how one student responded to our 2020 Student Opinion question: Do You Think Online Conspiracy Theories Can Be Dangerous? :

Conspiracy theories can either be malicious, dumb fun, or anything in between. Some conspiracy theories can be serious and about tragedies such as 9/11, but some conspiracy theories can be interesting, such as bots in a video game being alive. I enjoy a conspiracy theory every now or then, but I wouldn’t take them as an absolute truth, you always have to take them with a grain of salt.

In the article “ How a Viral Video Bent Reality ,” Kevin Roose writes about how the conspiracy film “Loose Change” energized the “9/11 truther” movement and also supplied the template for the current age of disinformation.

Students can read this article and consider some of the questions raised in the article:

Why do you think some people are drawn to conspiracy theories?

What role does technology play in the spread of conspiracy theories?

Respond to this quote from the article: “A more urgent lesson to take from ‘Loose Change’ is that conspiracy theories tend to flourish in low-trust environments, during periods of change and confusion.” Why do you think that is? How does that lesson apply to today’s world?

You can pair this article with the Student Opinion question mentioned above, inviting students to post their own comments in response to that question, or with our Lesson of the Day “How to Deal With a Crisis of Misinformation,” which includes strategies for countering misinformation.

10. Watch Our On-Demand Panel for Students: The Post-9/11 Generation

How did 9/11 shape the generation that grew up in its aftermath?

With New York Times journalists and student voices, we discuss this question in our special interactive panel. The panel features Yousur Al-Hlou and Biz Herman, who examined how Sept. 11 has been taught in classrooms around the world, and Kiana Hayeri, who photographed young Afghans as they experienced the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from their country. Invite students to register and view the on-demand panel .

Want more? For the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, in 2011, we published this roundup of hundreds of resources from The Learning Network and The New York Times for teaching about Sept. 11 and the aftermath, including ideas from educators across the country and links to the front pages of The Times for the 10 days after Sept. 11.

Nicole Daniels has been a staff editor with The Learning Network since 2019. More about Nicole Daniels

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9/11 Rememberance: Patriot Day

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Emergencies like the one that happened on September 11 in the United States require an extreme level of organisation and preparation to lessen the effects and catastrophe. Speak about this day that changed the history of the U.S and speak about how the response of the authorities was. For that, we have included lots of different resources to give data in a visual way: timelines, infographics, charts and graphs. Everything is editable so you can adapt the presentation to your needs.

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New York City skyline with The Tribute in Light 9/11 memorial and the Statue of Liberty. (Image credit: Getty Images)

How Stanford scholars are teaching the next generation about 9/11

On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, four Stanford scholars and leading experts in national security, terrorism and contemporary conflict – Condoleezza Rice, Amy Zegart, Martha Crenshaw and Lisa Blaydes – reflect on how their teaching of the terrorist attacks has evolved.

For those who remember Sept. 11, 2001, details of the day – the confusion, chaos and collective grief – are as clear now as they were 20 years ago when the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history occurred.

But many college students today have no memories of 19 al-Qaida operatives hijacking four commercial airplanes and killing nearly 3,000 people in a terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Teaching this next generation about the passion and the intensity that defined that pivotal moment is difficult, says Condoleezza Rice , who was the U.S. National Security Advisor at the time of the attacks.

For the new generation of students, 9/11 is now a part of history. “It would be like people trying to convey the intensity of World War II to me,” said Rice, who went on to serve as the 66th secretary of state of the United States under President George W. Bush before returning to her professorship at Stanford in 2009.

Rice, now the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution, was in the White House on that Tuesday morning of Sept 11. When she discusses the attacks with her students, her experiences on that day inevitably come up.

She is candid in her recounting. “That helps to vivify it because it’s a personal story,” Rice said.

When President George W. Bush returned to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, he met with Condoleezza Rice, who was then U.S. National Security Advisor, as well as from left: Vice President Dick Cheney, Chief of Staff Andy Card and Special Agent Carl Truscott of the U.S. Secret Service in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center of the White House. (Image credit: Eric Draper, Courtesy George W. Bush Presidential Library / Getty Images)

Condoleezza Rice, who served as President George W. Bush’s national security advisor before becoming the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, is pictured here taking notes from a phone call through a window in the Outer Oval Office on September 18, 2001. (Image credit: Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images)

Rice shares how, when the first plane hit the North Tower at the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., she and others were uncertain about the cause of the crash. She remembers wondering whether it could have been an accident. But when the second hijacked plane hit the remaining South Tower 17 minutes later, Rice knew it had to be a terrorist attack on the United States.

Then there was the short period when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could not be reached because the Pentagon was also hit that morning, Rice said. She, along with other senior government leaders, were ushered into the White House bunker. She tells students that around noon that day, oxygen levels started to drop because too many people were crammed into the fortified space. “So the Secret Service was going around saying, ‘You have to leave, you are not essential; you have to leave, you are not essential.’ You would never plan for such a thing as that,” she said.

Inevitably, a student will ask her if she was afraid. Rice was so taken aback the first time she faced that question that she actually paused to think about it – and then concluded that she wasn’t. “I didn’t have time to be scared,” Rice recalled. “You can fear for your loved ones, but you are not allowed to feel personal fear. You don’t think about that in the moment.”

“I try to help [students] understand how we are still living the effects of 9/11.” —Condoleezza Rice Director, Hoover Institution; Former U.S. National Security Advisor and 66th Secretary of State

Rice also emphasized the importance of talking to students about how 9/11 transformed the world and that what seems routine today – such as additional airport screenings and the formation of new government institutions – didn’t even exist before the attacks.

“I try to help them understand how we are still living the effects of 9/11,” said Rice. “It isn’t an event that happened one day and then was over, but everything from the way that you go through an airport to something called ‘homeland security,’ which you didn’t have before 9/11.”

Teaching 9/11 since 9/11

The attacks also introduced into the wider vernacular new places – like Afghanistan – and people – like Osama bin Laden – that students 20 years ago knew very little or nothing about.

Stanford scholars Amy Zegart and Martha Crenshaw experienced this firsthand on the day of the attacks when they found themselves in the surreal situation of teaching about 9/11 on 9/11. Both were so shocked by the unfolding events that they were unable to do anything except the one thing they were supposed to do that day, which was teach.

Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has written extensively on the issue of political terrorism; her first article, "The Concept of Revolutionary Terrorism," was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1972. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

Zegart led a crisis simulation for POLI SCI 114S: International Security in a Changing World. (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. There were more students in the lecture hall for Crenshaw’s course than were enrolled.

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.S. domestic and foreign policy.

“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. 9/11 looks inevitable in hindsight, but it was unimaginable on September 10.” —Amy Zegart Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute and Hoover Institution

“When something that shocking happens, our natural inclination is to make sense of what’s going on together, right now,” said Zegart, who is a leading scholar on national security and the Central Intelligence Agency and is now a senior scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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.

This is the world that today’s students have inherited. Even the current generation’s media, as Zegart’s research has shown, has become increasingly saturated with a proliferation of “spytainment” : movies and TV shows depicting, often inaccurately, the clandestine world of intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

Like Rice, Crenshaw has also found herself having to explain that none of this was normal before 9/11.

“I have to go back and say, ‘All this wasn’t always here before 9/11.’ I have to trace the trajectory of policy changes,” said Crenshaw, a senior fellow at FSI and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Shifts in emotion

In the first decade after the attacks, Zegart said her students were incredibly emotional about 9/11 and its aftermath, including the expansion of U.S. conflict abroad. 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.

In 2018, Stanford scholars Amy Zegart and Condoleezza Rice co-taught the course POLECON 584: Managing Global Political Risk. (Image credit: Rod Searcey)

“It was a really raw, personal experience for students studying foreign policy in the first decade after 9/11 because they were living with war and uncertainty,” said Zegart. She had to push them be more analytical and objective in their class discussions of what a post 9/11 world entailed.

As the years progressed, though, 9/11 increasingly became less personal for the next generation of students. Perceptions began to shift. So much so that Zegart now finds herself in the opposite predicament: How to insert those feelings back in .

“Because they didn’t live through it, they look at it distantly and dispassionately,” Zegart said. “The challenge is, how do you help students better understand the context in which decisions were made and the raw emotion that unavoidably affects how we perceive threats and how we deal with policy responses.”

Teaching the emotions of the day

To evoke a visceral response to 9/11, Zegart shows a 4-minute montage of news clips. Students get a sense of how the day unfolded, from the breaking reports of the first tower being struck to a reporter’s on-air reaction as the second plane crashes live into the remaining tower. There are also scenes of people fleeing lower Manhattan amid dust, smoke and debris.

“You just cannot convey that day in a normal lecture or a book,” Zegart said. The video is effective; her students are often left with a sense of the sadness, horror and anguish that defined 9/11.

Zegart then asks her students to imagine they are policymakers at the White House and have to decide what to do next. “We often teach U.S. foreign policymaking as a sterile, Spock-like process where people weigh the pros and cons of options and make dispassionate decisions,” Zegart said. “But human emotion and searing national experiences are important and hard to convey. 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. 9/11 looks inevitable in hindsight, but it was unimaginable on September 10.”

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.

“In retrospect, everything looks quite orderly,” said Rice, who co-taught a class on global risk with Zegart at the Graduate School Business. “It looks like ‘of course that decision led to that decision.’ Political scientists are always talking about the options that were put before the president. That’s not how crisis decision making unfolds. You are dealing with really incomplete information, you are dealing with the need to act now, and you are often reacting from instinct because you don’t have time to think through things.”

Viewing the attacks from all sides

When political scientist Lisa Blaydes teaches 9/11 to her students, she tries to give an international perspective of the issues, particularly on how grievances can arise – both legitimately or falsely constructed – in countries abroad and how that can lead to extremism and political violence. For example, in her course Political Science 149: Middle Eastern Politics , several classes are dedicated to examining anti-American attitudes in the Islamic world and the conditions under which individuals become radicalized.

“I try to make sure that students understand both the individual motivations associated with the radicalization of political thought as well as the global context that empowers radicalized individuals to undertake violent action,” said Blaydes, a professor of political science in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a senior fellow at FSI. She asks students to read Lawrence Wright’s book The Looming Tower , which picks up on themes Blaydes covers in the course, particularly those dealing with how authoritarian regimes in the Arab world provided a backdrop for the rise of al-Qaida.

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)

In recent years, Blaydes has found her students showing an increased interest in learning more about radical groups like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and how they have terrorized communities across the Middle East. “While Sept. 11 made terrorism a salient threat for Americans living in U.S. cities, both terrorism and state-sponsored violence are unfortunately a trauma shared by people around the world,” she said.

Similarly, Crenshaw said, it is important to explain to students the conditions that lead to such extremist views. But, she added, explaining motives should not be mistaken as justifying them. “We are not trying to excuse it; we are trying to understand why something happened,” she said.

With her students, Crenshaw has also looked at how terrorism has been used across history. In the aftermath of 9/11, terrorism almost exclusively became associated with a particular ideology and religion. But there are other examples throughout history of how it has been used as a form of political violence, she said.

“As an instructor, one of my goals was always to show students that 9/11 was something extraordinary, but there are other instances of terrorism and it can be associated with any ideology,” Crenshaw said.

Given its elasticity, terrorism is a confusing and contentious term with no standard definition, Crenshaw said . Thus, as both the term and the acts associated with terrorism have evolved over the past two decades, so has her teaching of it. “The phenomenon that you are trying to teach is changing over time as well, so it’s really a very dynamic subject requiring constant adjustment to take into account the vast outpouring of writing on terrorism but changing terrorism and counterterrorism as well,” she said.

In addition to situating 9/11 against a global and historical backdrop, teaching the attacks also requires a critical look at the domestic challenges that led up to it, including the shortcomings in U.S. intelligence. Zegart assigns students an article she wrote about the failures within the U.S. intelligence communities to adapt to the threat of terrorism, as well as a critique against her piece. “There’s no one perfect view, and if students can realize that their professor is part of an argument and people can disagree, that’s really important,” she said.

Zegart and Crenshaw have also assigned students the 9/11 Commission Report , the official report of the events that led up to the attacks and detailed account of the circumstances surrounding it.

‘Still hard’

Even though 20 years have passed since 9/11, it does not mean that teaching about the attacks has gotten easier.

“I still have a hard time,” Zegart said. “For years, my screensaver was a picture of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. It was important to me not to forget. I’ve spent my career researching why our intelligence agencies failed to stop 9/11 and how they can better meet threats in the future. I think about that day every day.”

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Slide Show: Remembering 9/11, Twelve Years Later

By The New Yorker

At 8:46 A.M. on Wednesday, twelve years to the minute after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center, hundreds of people gathered at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, in lower Manhattan. Others throughout the country also paused to mourn and honor those who died; President Obama held a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. Below is a series of images from the twelfth-anniversary events at the 9/11 Memorial and of some of Wednesday’s other moments of remembrance.

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By Antonia Hitchens

By Nicholas D. Lowry

By Jill Lepore

National Archives News

Remembering 9/11

Smoke rises from the site of the World Trade Center in New York City, September 11, 2001. (Photo by Paul Morse;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997250 )

Map of four flights and timeline of events on September 11, 2001. ( National Archives Catalog ID 5899988 )

President George W. Bush and White House staff at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, FL, watch news coverage of Flight 175 striking the South Tower of the World Trade Center. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 204326996 ) 

Onboard the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower , U.S. Navy sailors watch televised news reports, showing the World Trade Center, during the terrorist attacks. (Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Justin K. Thomas, USN;  National Archives Catalog ID 6610647 )

A sign states "All Crossings to New York Closed" after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on New York City. (Photo by Paul Morse;  National Archives Catalog ID 205206239 )

President George W. Bush visits New York City on September 14, 2001. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997294 )

President George W. Bush waves to rescue workers while touring the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attack in New York City. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997292 )

A helmet and flowers sit atop a rack at New York City's Engine Co. 55 firehouse in New York City. (Photo by Eric Draper;  National Archives Catalog ID 5997366 )

Firefighters try to contain the fire after the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. (Photo by U.S. Air Force Technical Sgt. Jim Varhegyi;  National Archives Catalog ID 6523862 )

An aerial view of the Pentagon two days after September 11 shows the impact point where the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the building. (U.S. Air Force Technical Sgt. Cedric H. Rudisill;  National Archives Catalog ID 6523869 )

Firefighters gather outside the Pentagon hours after American Airlines Fight 77 was piloted by terrorists into the building. (Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Jim Watson;  National Archives Catalog ID 6610676 )

As rescue and recovery operations continued, family members gathered at the Pentagon on September 15 to view the area where their loved ones perished. (Photo by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. John Valceanu;  National Archives Catalog ID 6519375 )

Near Shanksville, PA, a chain-link fence bearing flags, hats, rosaries, and other items served as a temporary memorial honoring the passengers and crew of Flight 93. ( National Archives Catalog ID 5616340 )

A marker at the temporary memorial, near Shanksville, PA, honors the passengers and crew of Flight 93, hijacked on September 11, 2001. ( National Archives Catalog ID 5616321 ) 

The National Archives safeguards many records related to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, including those of the 9/11 Commission , the 9/11 Federal Aviation Administration records, and the records of the George W. Bush Presidential Library .

Most of us remember where we were and how life changed that day. As an agency with facilities in Washington, DC, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and California, the immediacy of the events felt that much closer to our homes and workplaces.

Left: Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry render honors as firefighters and rescue workers unfurl an American flag at the Pentagon. (Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Michael Pendergrass) View in National Archives Catalog

Video: A Life of Selfless Service, Sacrifice, and Civic Engagement: Cyril "Rick" Rescorla

• Teaching Activities for all grade levels focused on Rick Rescorla, who helped thousands of people to safety in the World Trade Center on 9/11.
• More primary sources  

Blogs and Social Media

First pitch showcased in all american exhibit demonstrates how sports helped unite nation after 9/11.

The photo of President Bush throwing out the first pitch of the World Series remains a symbol of a step toward a return to normalcy following the attacks, both for New York City and the United States. More

‘In our New York office: A day like no other’

On the anniversary of the attacks, we reprint the firsthand account from staff at the National Archives at New York City. (National Archives News) More

• AOTUS:  We Remember: 20th Anniversary of 9/11
• NARAtions: Remembering 9/11: Photos from the George W. Bush Library on Flickr
• National Archives News:  9/11 Fireman’s Son Sees Dad on National Archives Instagram
• Pieces of History:  9/11: An Address to the Nation
• Pieces of History: Ten Years Later: Handling 9/11 Commission Records
• Pieces of History: 9/11: The World Series and a President’s Pitch
• Pieces of History: The Patriot Act
• Pieces of History: 9/11: An Address to the Nation
• The Text Message: Shutting Down the Sky: The Federal Aviation Administration on 9/11
• The Text Message: Rusty the Comfort Dog
• The Text Message: The Zone
• The Text Message: September 11 Through the Eyes of Children
• The Text Message: The Best Prophet of the Future is the Past: September 11—1970, 1981, and 2001
• Transforming Classification: PIDB Recommends the Prioritized Declassification of 9/11 Records
• Today’s Document: The Twin Towers
• Unwritten Record:  Remembering 9/11
• Facebook: Reflections on a 9/11 Anniversary

Images from 9/11

9/11 Flickr Collection from the George W. Bush Presidential Library

• 9/11: A Presidential Reaction
• 9/11: A National Resolve
• 9/11: A Day of Remembrance
• 9/11: A Global Response
• 9/11: A Spirit Renewed

Selection of photographs in the National Archives Catalog

9/11 Commission Records at the National Archives

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, aka the 9/11 Commission, was an independent, bipartisan commission created by Congress to provide a "full and complete accounting" of the 9/11 attacks. The Commission operated from 2003 to 2004 and held hearings, conducted interviews, and issued a final report. 

When the 9/11 Commission closed on August 21, 2004, it transferred legal custody of its records (approximately 570 cubic feet of textual records alone) to the National Archives. As part of the Legislative Branch, the Commission’s records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. 

Due to the collection’s volume and the large percentage of national security classified files, the National Archives staff continues to process these materials.

9/11 Commission Resources Online

• 9/11 Commission records : Introductory page
• 9/11 Commission records FAQs : Answers to frequently asked questions about access to the records.
• 9/11 Commission's website preserved as it appeared on August 21, 2004 (the Commission's closing day). Includes staff monographs, staff biographies and statements, the final report, hearing transcripts and video, lists of witnesses, and press releases.
• 9/11 Commission Memoranda for the Record (MFRs): Commission staff conducted and summarized more than 1,200 interviews.

9/11 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Records

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) compiled records to support internal and external investigations of the events. This collection consists of 126 cubic feet of textual, audio, and electronic files.

• 9/11 FAA Records web page and FAQs 
• Finding aid to 9/11 FAA records
• 9/11 FAA Open Files 
• 9/11 FAA Glossary and Vocabulary
• 9/11 FAA File Inventory and Corrected File Names

At the Presidential Libraries

William J. Clinton Library

• USS Cole and September 11, 2001

George W. Bush Library

• September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks
• Video: Address to Nation on Terrorist Attacks, 9/11/2001
• Video: Remarks from Emma E. Booker Elementary School, 9/11/2001
• Video: Remarks at Barksdale Air Force Base, LA, 9/11/2001
• Video: President Bush Visits Ground Zero, remarks to First Responders, 9/14/2001
• President George Signs the Patriot Act, 10/26/2001
• Archived website from the George W. Bush White House: Remembering 9/11

Barack Obama Library

• President Obama Speaks at 9/11 Museum Dedication, 5/14/2014
• Proclamation—Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance, 9/9/2011
• Vice President Joe Biden on Remembering 9/11: "We are a Nation about Possibilities"
• Presidential Address: Death of Osama Bin Laden, 5/2/2011

Donald J. Trump Library

• What the World Learned on September 11, 2001
• Continuation of National Emergency Re: Persons who Commit, Threaten to Commit, or Support Terrorism
• Presidential Proclamation on National Days of Prayer and Remembrance, 2019

Building the World Trade Center

"Constructing the World Trade Center" - VISION USA, No. 06, 1972 ( National Archives Identifier 58975 )

World Trade Center Photographs from the DOCUMERICA Project

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9/11 Timeline

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 11, 2023 | Original: June 21, 2011

On September 11, 2001 —a clear, sunny, late summer day—al Qaeda terrorists aboard three hijacked passenger planes carried out coordinated suicide attacks against the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. , killing everyone on board the planes and nearly 3,000 people on the ground. A fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all on board, after passengers and crew attempted to wrest control from the hijackers.

Below is a chronology of the events of 9/11 as they unfolded. All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

• 7:59 am – American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 with 92 people aboard, takes off from Boston’s Logan International Airport en route to Los Angeles.

• 8:14 am – United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 with 65 people aboard, takes off from Boston; it is also headed to Los Angeles.

• 8:19 am – Flight attendants aboard Flight 11 alert ground personnel that the plane has been hijacked; American Airlines notifies the FBI .

• 8:20 am – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C. The Boeing 757 is headed to Los Angeles with 64 people aboard.

• 8:24 am – Hijacker Mohammed Atta makes the first of two accidental transmissions from Flight 11 to ground control (apparently in an attempt to communicate with the plane’s cabin).

• 8:40 am – Air traffic controllers at The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alert North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) about the suspected hijacking of Flight 11. In response, NEADS located at Cape Cod’s Otis Air National Guard Base to locate and tail Flight 11; they are not yet in the air when Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower.

• 8:40 am – Air traffic controllers at The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) alert North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) about the suspected hijacking of Flight 11. In response, NEADS scrambles two fighter planes located at Cape Cod’s Otis Air National Guard Base to locate and tail Flight 11; they are not yet in the air when Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower.

• 8:41 am – United Airlines Flight 93 , a Boeing 757 with 44 people aboard, takes off from Newark International Airport en route to San Francisco . It had been scheduled to depart at 8:00 am, around the time of the other hijacked flights.

• 8:46 am – Mohammed Atta and the other hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11 crash the plane into floors 93-99 of the North Tower of the World Trade Center , killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building.

Photos: The World Trade Center

• 8:47 am – Within seconds, NYPD and FDNY forces dispatch units to the World Trade Center, while Port Authority Police Department officers on site begin immediate evacuation of the North Tower.

• 8:50 am – White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card alerts President George W. Bush that a plane has hit the World Trade Center; the president is visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida at the time.

• 9:02 am – After initially instructing tenants of the WTC’s South Tower to remain in the building, Port Authority officials broadcast orders to evacuate both towers via the public address system; an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people are already in the process of evacuating.

• 9:03 am – Hijackers crash United Airlines Flight 175 into floors 75-85 of the WTC’s South Tower, killing everyone on board and hundreds inside the building

• 9:08 am – The FAA bans all takeoffs of flights going to New York City or through the airspace around the city.

• 9:21 am – The Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in the New York City area.

• 9:24 am – The FAA notified NEADS of the suspected hijacking of Flight 77 after some passengers and crew aboard are able to alert family members on the ground.

• 9:31 am – Speaking from Florida, President Bush calls the events in New York City an “apparent terrorist attack on our country.”

• 9:37 am – Hijackers aboard Flight 77 crash the plane into the western façade of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing 59 aboard the plane and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the building.

Photos: The Pentagon

• 9:42 am – For the first time in history, the FAA grounds all flights over or bound for the continental United States. Over the next two-and-a-half hours, some 3,300 commercial flights and 1,200 private planes are guided to land at airports in Canada and the United States.

• 9:45 am – Amid escalating rumors of other attacks, the White House and U.S. Capitol building are evacuated (along with numerous other high-profile buildings, landmarks and public spaces).

• 9:59 am – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

• 10:07 am – After passengers and crew members aboard the hijacked Flight 93 contact friends and family and learn about the attacks in New York and Washington, they mount an attempt to retake the plane. In response, hijackers deliberately crash the plane into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania , killing all 40 passengers and crew aboard.

Photos: Flight 93

• 10:28 am – The World Trade Center’s North Tower collapses, 102 minutes after being struck by Flight 11.

• 11 am – Mayor Rudolph Giuliani calls for the evacuation of Lower Manhattan south of Canal Street, including more than 1 million residents, workers and tourists, as efforts continue throughout the afternoon to search for survivors at the WTC site.

• 1 pm – At Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana , President Bush announces that U.S. military forces are on high alert worldwide.

• 2:51 pm – The U.S. Navy dispatches missile destroyers to New York and Washington, D.C.

• 5:20 pm – The 47-story Seven World Trade Center collapses after burning for hours; the building had been evacuated in the morning, and there are no casualties, though the collapse forces rescue workers to flee for their lives. It is the last of the Twin Towers to fall.

• 6:58 pm – President Bush returns to the White House after stops at military bases in Louisiana and Nebraska .

• July 22, 2004: The 9/11 Commission Report is released. It includes classified documents, airport security footage of the hijackers, and cockpit voice recordings from United Airlines Flight 93. The report claims all 19 hijackers were members of al Qaeda.

• October 17, 2006: A federal judge rejects New York City’s motion to dismiss lawsuits from first responders who are requesting health payments.

• January 2, 2011: The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 is signed into law by President Barack Obama . It renews and expands the Victim Compensation Fund.

• May 2, 2011: Osama bin Laden is killed by U.S. Navy Seals.

• September 11, 2011: The World Trade Center Memorial opens to the public on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

• May 10, 2014: The unidentified remains of people killed in New York City on 9/11 are returned to the World Trade Center Site.

• May 15, 2014: The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is dedicated in lower Manhattan.

• November 3, 2014: One World Trade Center officially opens on the site of the Twin Towers

• July 29, 2019: President Donald Trump signs $10 billion legislation authorizing support for the Victims Compensation Fund through 2092.

• August 30, 2019: A U.S. military court judge in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba sets a trial date of January 11, 2021 for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other four men charged with plotting the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; the trial was later postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

• July 31, 2022: Ayman al-Zawahiri, a key planner of the attacks and the leader of al Qaeda following bin Laden's death, is killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

HISTORY Vault: 9/11 Documentaries

Explore this collection of extraordinary documentary films about one of the most challenging days in U.S. history.

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Smart News | September 9, 2021

Free Online Resources About 9/11

Browse 12 archives, databases and portals that help users deepen their understanding of the attacks

Nora McGreevy

Correspondent

Twenty years after September 11, 2001, the first generation that grew up in a world profoundly altered by the attacks is coming of age.

Many of these young adults have little or no memory of the day itself. As the Pew Research Center reports, just 42 percent of 25-year-old Americans clearly remember where they were when they learned of the attacks. But for those who do remember, the horror of 9/11 remains fresh.

On that day, more than 2,977 people were killed in New York, Arlington and Pennsylvania. Thousands sustained physical injuries, and thousands more continue to reckon with trauma inflicted by the tragedy. Post- 9/11 wars , including those in Afghanistan and Iraq, have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more. The profound changes wrought by September 11, including the U.S. military response and the attacks’ impact on American art and culture , continue to be felt to this day.

Individuals hoping to learn more about this multifaceted history may find it difficult to know where to start. To support this search, Smithsonian has compiled a list of 12 free resources that deepen readers’ understanding of the September 11 attacks and their complicated, painful legacy. From the Library of Congress to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, these archives, databases and web platforms help researchers and members of the public alike make sense of one of the most defining events of the 21st century.

National September 11 Memorial and Museum

Every year, millions of people visit Ground Zero to see the two square reflecting pools installed where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) once stood. The museum affiliated with this memorial offers a bevy of digital resources , including explanatory exhibitions about the history of the WTC and the search for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden . Librarians and educators can register to download a free poster exhibition about the attacks for classroom use.

Online viewers can also peruse the museum’s collection of more than 70,000 artifacts, including material evidence such as a pair of shoes worn by a survivor of the towers’ collapse. Those interested in hearing firsthand accounts of the day can listen to an edited selection from the museum’s ever-expanding collection of more than 1,000 oral histories.

September 11 Digital Archive

A project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, this free online archive holds more than 150,000 files related to 9/11. Users can browse over 40,000 first-person accounts; scroll through some 15,000 images; or peruse emails, documents, sound clips, videos and other digital ephemera.

The Library of Congress

Within hours of the attacks, Library of Congress (LOC) staff began collecting original materials linked to the day. Online users can search the library’s digital collections to find photographs, poetry, art, maps and eyewitness accounts of 9/11, many of which were featured in a 2002 exhibition at the Washington, D.C. institution.

The library’s 9/11 web archive preserves slices of the early internet as it appeared in the weeks and months following the attacks. Offerings include memorial websites, the front pages of major magazines like the New Yorker , political and religious websites, and the home page of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee .

On the day after the attacks, the LOC’s American Folklife Center started collecting oral history interviews with survivors and people across the country. “This collection captures the voices of a diverse ethnic, socioeconomic, and political cross-section of America during trying times and serves as a historical and cultural resource for future generations,” the library notes. Listeners can hear more than 150 of the audio recordings here .

National Museum of American History

Shortly after September 11, Congress designated the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) as the official repository for all objects related to the attacks. Curators cast a wide net, searching for items that explained the immediate impact of the violence and illuminated rescue and recovery efforts.

Today, viewers can explore the collection online. Items of note include the cellphone that then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani used to coordinate emergency efforts on the day of the attacks and a clock from the Pentagon whose hands froze when the plane hit the building.

NMAH also holds a turban that once belonged to Balbir Singh Sodhi , an Indian immigrant who owned a gas station in Mesa, Arizona. Four days after the attacks, a gunman killed Sodhi in a drive-by shooting. The killer had assumed that Sodhi was Muslim because of his turban; in reality, he was a follower of the Sikh faith. His murder marked the first in a wave of post-9/11 hate crimes against Muslim, South Asian, Arab and Middle Eastern communities in the U.S.

Brooklyn-based nonprofit StoryCorps preserves short oral histories—some accompanied by animations—from September 11 survivors and victims’ families. Viewers can peruse the multimedia stories and read transcripts of interviews on the organization’s website. Listings include an interview with Sodhi’s brothers, Rana and Harjit Sodhi .

American Archive of Public Broadcasting

The September 11 attacks consumed news cycles across the country on the day of the event and for weeks afterward. Through the 9/11 Special Coverage Collection at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting , members of the public can comb through hours of footage from 68 local and national television and radio stations.

Featured clips include a “PBS NewsHour” segment that aired on the evening of 9/11 and a September 12 “ New York Voices ” episode that found hosts Bill Moyer and Bill Baker interviewing religious leaders, callers and frontline workers as they began to process the attacks.

The Costs of War Project

More than 50 scholars, human rights practitioners and other experts contribute to Brown University’s Costs of War project, which documents the enormous human and monetary cost of the U.S.-led, post-9/11 military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as related violence in Pakistan and Syria. Readers can explore academic papers, data and classroom resources for free on the program’s website . All told, the team estimates that these conflicts have killed more than 929,000 people and displaced more than 38 million across the world.

Pew Research Center

To mark the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center compiled a comprehensive, user-friendly overview of data about 9/11. Readers can access the resource here . Topics covered include trends in public opinion over the past two decades: For instance, though Americans overwhelmingly supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at their outset, 69 percent now say that the U.S. mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan.

Othering and Belonging Institute’s Islamophobia Project

Researchers with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute maintain a searchable database of anti-Muslim legislation introduced and enacted in the past decade, as well as major shifts in anti-Muslim sentiment that took place in the U.S. in the wake of 9/11. Online users can use the site more broadly to learn about the history of Islamophobia and find additional reading resources on the subject.

National Archives and Records Administration

In late 2002, Congress and President George W. Bush created the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, otherwise known as the 9/11 Commission , to research the events of September 11. Investigators conducted more than 1,200 fact-finding interviews. Executive summaries of some of these interviews have been declassified and can be located in the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) digital catalog .

The commission’s full report, which is preserved by NARA and can be read in full here , chronicled the events of the day as accurately as possible and provided recommendations to prevent future attacks.

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Within three years of the attacks, the United States had launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The military also opened Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a U.S. military prison in Cuba, as part of a series of aggressive anti-terrorism military operations.

In 2014, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released an investigative report detailing the CIA’s use of torture and other human rights abuses inflicted on prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere during the so-called “War on Terror.” Though the full document remains classified, members of the public can read the committee’s executive summary, findings and conclusions online .

The New York Times

On the tenth anniversary of the attacks, the New York Times created an expansive hub for educators seeking to explain 9/11 and its impact on the world to students. Free resources include lesson plans, activities and readings that address complex subjects such as the war in Afghanistan and racism against Muslim Americans.

A separate anniversary collection designed for adult readers is available online, too. Highlights include more than 2,500 “ impressionistic sketches ” of lives lost, an interactive reconstruction of the World Trade Center as it stood prior to the attacks and a feature article on Muslim Americans who came of age in the decade following 9/11.

The Washington Post

In 2019, a protracted legal battle mounted by the Washington Post successfully secured the release of a series of interviews with high-ranking officials about the war in Afghanistan. Reporter Craig Whitlock published the Post ’s first survey of the papers in an article titled “ At War With the Truth ”; the story was later turned into a book .

As Whitlock reported, the documents “reveal[ed] that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.” Readers can explore the Post ’s reporting, feedback from the public and interviewees, timelines of the war, and more than 2,000 pages of documents online.

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Nora McGreevy | | READ MORE

Nora McGreevy is a former daily correspondent for Smithsonian . She is also a freelance journalist based in Chicago whose work has appeared in Wired , Washingtonian , the Boston Globe , South Bend Tribune , the New York Times and more.

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What was the World Trade Center?

The World Trade Center (WTC) was a 16-acre commercial complex in lower Manhattan that contained seven buildings, a large plaza, and an underground shopping mall that connected six of the buildings. The centerpieces of the complex were the Twin Towers. On September 11, 2001, the entire complex was destroyed in a terrorist attack that has come to be referred to as “9/11.”

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What were the Twin Towers?

The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in New York City. At 110 stories each, 1 WTC (North Tower) and 2 WTC (South Tower) provided nearly 10 million square feet of office space for about 35,000 people and 430 companies. For a brief period upon their completion in 1973, they were the tallest buildings in the world. They attracted roughly 70,000 commuters and tourists daily.

The towers were massive. The North Tower rose 1,368 feet—1,730 feet with a large antenna—and the South Tower stood 1,362 feet high. Views extended 45 miles or more from the top of the towers in every direction—far enough to see all five New York City boroughs, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Each weighed more than 250,000 tons and contained 99 elevators and 21,800 windows. Each floor was an acre in size and there was enough concrete in the towers to build a five-foot-wide sidewalk from New York City to Washington, D.C.

The towers had been the target of an attack before 9/11. On February 26, 1993, terrorists with links to an Islamist extremist group detonated explosives in a van parked underneath the WTC. Six people were killed and thousands were injured.

What happened on 9/11?

“9/11” is shorthand for four coordinated terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, that occurred on the morning of September 11, 2001.

Nineteen terrorists from al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes, deliberately crashing two of the planes into the upper floors of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center complex and a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The Twin Towers ultimately collapsed because of the damage sustained from the impacts and the resulting fires. After learning about the other attacks, passengers on the fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, fought back, and the plane was crashed into an empty field in western Pennsylvania about 20 minutes by air from Washington, D.C.

The attacks killed 2,977 people from 93 nations: 2,753 people were killed in New York; 184 people were killed at the Pentagon; and 40 people were killed on Flight 93.

What happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11?

The hijacked Flight 11 was crashed into floors 93 to 99 of the North Tower (1 WTC) at 8:46 a.m. The hijacked Flight 175 struck floors 77 to 85 of the South Tower (2 WTC) 17 minutes later at 9:03 a.m. When the towers were struck, between 16,400 and 18,000 people were in the WTC complex. Of those, the vast majority evacuated safely. As they rushed out, first responders rushed in trying to save those still trapped or injured.

The fires from the impacts were intensified by the planes’ burning jet fuel. They weakened the steel support trusses, which attached each of the floors to the buildings’ exterior walls. Along with the initial damage to the buildings’ structural columns, this ultimately caused both towers to collapse. The five other buildings in the WTC complex were also destroyed because of damage sustained when the Twin Towers fell.

The collapse of the buildings left the site devastated. Thousands of volunteers came to Ground Zero to help with the rescue, recovery, and clean-up efforts, and on May 30, 2002, the last piece of WTC steel was ceremonially removed.

What is Islam?

Islam is the world’s second-largest religion. An adherent of Islam is a Muslim. Islam’s beliefs and practices center around two key sources: the Qur’an and the Hadith. The Qur’an contains what Muslims believe is God’s final revelation, made to the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, more than 1,400 years ago. The Hadith is a collection of Muhammad’s sayings and deeds during his life.

What is an Islamist extremist?

“Islamists” see Islam as a guiding ideology for politics and the organization of society. That is, they believe that strict adherence to religious law should be the sole basis for a country’s law, as well as its cultural and social life. While some Muslims believe this, many do not. Islamist extremists believe violence is acceptable to achieve these ends. Al-Qaeda is one of many Islamist extremist groups.

What is al-Qaeda?

Al-Qaeda is an international Islamist extremist terrorist network founded in the late 1980s by Osama bin Laden, who was killed in a U.S. military operation on May 1, 2011, and others who were involved in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Their aim has been to overthrow governments in the Middle East, and elsewhere in the Muslim world, which do not strictly enforce a religiously sanctioned political and social order. Attacks against the United States were intended to reduce American support for many of these governments; U.S. support was viewed by al-Qaeda as a major obstacle to creating a global order under Islamic authority.

They have claimed responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks since the early 1990s, including the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole ,   and the 9/11 attacks. They have also aligned themselves with and inspired other terrorist groups who have carried out attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombing, the 2004 Madrid train bombing, the 2005 London bombings, and the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, among many others.

Why did the terrorists attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

The terrorists did not have the capacity to destroy the United States militarily, so they set their sights on symbolic targets instead. The Twin Towers, as the centerpieces of the World Trade Center, symbolized globalization and America’s economic power and prosperity.

The Pentagon, as the headquarters for the U.S. Department of Defense, serves as a symbol of American military power. It is thought that Flight 93 was headed to the Capitol building, the center of American legislative government.

Al-Qaeda hoped that, by attacking these symbols of American power, they would promote widespread fear throughout the country and severely weaken the United States’ standing in the world community, ultimately supporting their political and religious goals in the Middle East and Muslim world.

What countries did the terrorists come from?

Fifteen of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. Two were from the United Arab Emirates, one was from Lebanon, and one was from Egypt.

What does Afghanistan have to do with 9/11?

Al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan. They operated training camps there, and openly lived in the country with the support of the Taliban, an Islamist group that ruled the country.

On September 20, 2001, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, former President George W. Bush asserted: “Any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” No distinction was made between a harboring state and the terrorists it was harboring. The U.S. government insisted that the Taliban immediately hand over the terrorists and close the training camps or face an attack from the United States. When they refused, “Operation Enduring Freedom” was launched on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the attacks of 9/11.

What is the 9/11 Memorial?

The 9/11 Memorial opened on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It is located on the western side of the former World Trade Center complex where the Twin Towers once stood. The Memorial was designed by two architects, Michael Arad and Peter Walker, whose proposal was selected in a design competition out of 5,201 submissions from 63 countries.

The Memorial Plaza surrounds two enormous reflecting pools set within the footprints of the North and South Towers. This is where the towers used to stand. The pools feature 30-foot waterfalls—the largest man-made waterfalls in North America. The water cascades into reflecting pools, finally disappearing into the center voids. The names of people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks in New York, at the Pentagon, and on Flight 93, as well as in the 1993 bombing at the WTC, are etched in bronze around the edges of the pools.

The plaza is lined with cobblestones and has more than 400 swamp white oak trees, creating a space for reflection separate from the sights and sounds of the surrounding city. The trees were selected from within a 500-mile radius of the WTC site, including nurseries located in New York, Pennsylvania, and near Washington, D.C., to symbolize areas impacted on 9/11.

What is the 9/11 Memorial Museum?

The 9/11 Memorial Museum opened on May 21, 2014. It is located beneath the Memorial Plaza. Visitors enter the Museum through the Pavilion, where two steel “tridents”—remnants of the North Tower’s façade—stand in the building’s Atrium Terrace. The main exhibition space is located seven stories below the 9/11 Memorial at the bedrock foundations of the World Trade Center. The Museum offers displays of artifacts from the WTC and 9/11 attacks, interactive exhibitions, contemplative areas, and programs that convey individual and collective stories relating the experiences of survivors, first responders, area residents, and eyewitnesses. A memorial exhibition honors the individual victims of the attacks.

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The legacy of 9/11: reflections on a global tragedy.

(Illustration by Michael S. Helfenbein)

Twenty years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the tragic consequences of that day continue to resonate across the world. On this somber anniversary, members of the Yale faculty reflect on the painful and complicated legacy of 9/11 and how the trauma of the event, which for a time created unity in the United States, has in the decades since led to a more divided nation and dangerous world.

Trauma, solidarity, and division

By Jeffrey Alexander Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Societies shift between experiences of division and moments of solidarity. It is collective trauma that often triggers such shifts.

When Osama Bin Laden organized acts of horrific mass murder against civilians on September 11, 2001, he declared that “the values of this Western civilization under the leadership of America have been destroyed” because “those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have… gone up in smoke.” What happened, instead, was that Americans recast the fearful destruction as an ennobling narrative that revealed not weakness, but the strength of the nation’s democratic core.

Before 9/11, American had been experiencing a moment of severe political and cultural division. In its immediate aftermath, the national community was united by feeling, marked by the loving kindness displayed among persons who once had been friends, and by the civility and solicitude among those who once had been strangers …

Read more from Jeffrey Alexander

No clean break

By Joanne Meyerowitz Arthur Unobskey Professor of History and professor of American studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, historians pointed to precedents: the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor, say, and terrorist attacks — domestic and foreign — that had targeted civilians. They soon moved on to warnings against unnecessary and prolonged wars, with frequent reference to Vietnam, and to placing the security state within the long history of domestic surveillance, racial profiling, and violations of civil liberties. The common thread was that Sept. 11 did not represent a clean break with the past. It was not “one of those moments,” as The New York Times had claimed, “in which history splits” in two …

Read more from Joanne Meyerowitz

An embrace of profiling

By Zareena Grewal Associate professor American studies; ethnicity, race, and migration; and religious studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

In 2001, the New York City Police Department established a secret surveillance program that mapped and monitored American Muslims’ lives throughout New York City, and in neighboring states, including Connecticut. In 2011, journalists leaked internal NYPD documents which led to an outcry from public officials, activists, and American Muslim leaders who protested that such racial and religious profiling was not only an example of ineffective policing and wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars, but it collectively criminalized American Muslims. The leaked documents revealed that Yale’s Muslim Students Association was among the campus chapters targeted …

Read more from Zareena Grewal

A new outlet

By Paul Bracken Professor emeritus of management and political science, Yale School of Management

Following the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy establishment was spoiling for another fight to overthrow tyranny. Yet there was no domestic support for such a war. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait led to the first Gulf War. But the failure to end his regime left a good part of the establishment with a sense of unfulfilled destiny. These were the trends underway before 9/11. But there was no outlet to give them voice.

By linking a war on terror with a projection of our idea of democracy onto the Middle East, the attack on 9/11 provided that outlet …

Read more from Paul Bracken

A war game, gone terribly wrong

By Kishwar Rizvi Professor in the history of art, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

September 11, 2001, is a Tuesday. At 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., two hijacked planes fly into the towers of the World Trade Center. Six hours later, I give my first class of the year, in Street Hall. It is unclear how the afternoon will unfold, but as the class gathers, we find comfort in each other’s presence.

The unconditional empathy and bravery shown by my students that day 20 years ago is something I carry with me. It is a necessary requirement for studying and teaching about Islam today. Art and architecture, framed through social and political discourse, serve as important conduits for understanding the history and culture of the West and South Asia — the epicenter of the “War on Terror” launched soon after 9/11. I find clarity in the work of Shahzia Sikander and Lida Abdul, women artists from the region …

Read more from Kishwar Rizvi

For millions of refugees, the crisis continues

By Marcia C. Inhorn William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs; chair, Council on Middle East Studies

September 11 was a devastating event for the United States, causing the senseless deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans and the injury of more than 6,000 others. September 11 was also a tragedy for the Middle East, as the U.S. responded by initiating two wars, one in Afghanistan in 2001 and one in Iraq in 2003. These long-term and costly wars in the Middle Eastern region have killed thousands of innocent civilians and displaced millions of people.

Of the 26 million refugees and 80 million forcibly displaced people in the world today, the majority are from the Middle East, especially Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Indeed, we are now in the midst of an Afghan refugee crisis, the magnitude of which is yet to unfold …

Read more from Marcia C. Inhorn

The loss of history

By Eckart Frahm Professor of Near Eastern languages & civilizations, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

The events of 9/11 have led to actions on the part of the U.S. that have thoroughly transformed the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite an enormous investment of lives and money, the region remains deeply troubled. The world’s attention has been focused, for good reasons, on the political and humanitarian catastrophes that have befallen it. But for someone like me who is studying the civilizations of the ancient Near East, a particularly devastating aspect of the crisis has been its disastrous effect on the region’s cultural heritage …

Read more from Eckart Frahm

Tragedy for the world

By Samuel Moyn Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and professor of history, Yale Law School

September 11 was a tragedy for America, but it prompted an American response that has been a tragedy for the world. After two decades of war, every place American force has touched has been made worse, with the risk of terrorism often exacerbated, and at the price of millions of lives and trillions of dollars.

More than this, even though Joe Biden has followed his two predecessors in withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the authorities the American president has arrogated over two decades to send force abroad have not been reined in. Nor does the war on terror — as distinct from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that started it — seem likely to end in the foreseeable future …

Read more from Samuel Moyn

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9-1-1: The Number to Know

9-1-1 education resources, this collection of 911 resources has been produced by both the national 911 education coalition and 911 organizations across the country. please download and share them with your peers to help spread awareness of appropriate uses of 911., text to 9-1-1, posters and flyers, videos and public service announcements, 9-1-1 education for children, 9-1-1 education for adults and businesses, additional resources, april education month, telecomm unicator week.

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Thank you to the following organization for contributing public education resources for use by the entire 911 community: 4029tv.com, Ambulance New Brunswick’s Emergency Medical Dispatchers, Brenda Storti, Castle Rock Police Department, Cell Phone Sally 911, City of Aurora, Co., City of Longmont, Co., City of Plano, Charleston County Consolidated 9-1-1 Center, Chester County Department of Emergency Services, Columbia/Boone County, Educate 911, Effingham City Police Department, INNENA/State of Indiana, Marshall Publishing, Mesilla Valley Regional Dispatch Authority, Mid America Regional Council, Kansas, New Hanover County Television, North Carolina, Northwest Central Dispatch System, Pinellas County, State of Vermont, St. Tammany Parish, and Vermont’s Enhanced 9-1-1 Board.

The resources posted on the Web site of the National 911  Education Coalition were not created by the Coalition and are not property of the Coalition.  They are being shared in the interest of information exchange. The opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in these publication and on these Web sites are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Coalition. The National 911 Education Coalition assumes no liability for their contents or use thereof. If trade names, manufacturers’ names, or specific products are mentioned, it is because they are considered essential to the object of the publication and should not be construed as an endorsement. The National 911 Education Coalition does not endorse products, services or organizations.

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Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11

Table of contents.

Americans watched in horror as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 20 years later, they watched in sorrow as the nation’s military mission in Afghanistan – which began less than a month after 9/11 – came to a bloody and chaotic conclusion.

The enduring power of the Sept. 11 attacks is clear: An overwhelming share of Americans who are old enough to recall the day remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. Yet an ever-growing number of Americans have no personal memory of that day, either because they were too young or not yet born.

A review of U.S. public opinion in the two decades since 9/11 reveals how a badly shaken nation came together, briefly, in a spirit of sadness and patriotism; how the public initially rallied behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, though support waned over time; and how Americans viewed the threat of terrorism at home and the steps the government took to combat it.

As the country comes to grips with the tumultuous exit of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, the departure has raised long-term questions about U.S. foreign policy and America’s place in the world. Yet the public’s initial judgments on that mission are clear: A majority endorses the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, even as it criticizes the Biden administration’s handling of the situation. And after a war that cost thousands of lives – including more than 2,000 American service members – and trillions of dollars in military spending, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that 69% of U.S. adults say the United States has mostly failed to achieve its goals in Afghanistan.

This examination of how the United States changed in the two decades following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is based on an analysis of past public opinion survey data from Pew Research Center, news reports and other sources.

Current data is from a Pew Research Center survey of 10,348 U.S. adults conducted Aug. 23-29, 2021. Most of the interviewing was conducted before the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at Kabul airport, and all of it was conducted before the completion of the evacuation. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used  for the report, along with responses, and  its methodology .

A devastating emotional toll, a lasting historical legacy

Shock, sadness, fear, anger: The 9/11 attacks inflicted a devastating emotional toll on Americans. But as horrible as the events of that day were, a 63% majority of Americans said they couldn’t stop watching news coverage of the attacks.

Our first survey following the attacks went into the field just days after 9/11, from Sept. 13-17, 2001. A sizable majority of adults (71%) said they felt depressed, nearly half (49%) had difficulty concentrating and a third said they had trouble sleeping.

It was an era in which television was still the public’s dominant news source – 90% said they got most of their news about the attacks from television, compared with just 5% who got news online – and the televised images of death and destruction had a powerful impact. Around nine-in-ten Americans (92%) agreed with the statement, “I feel sad when watching TV coverage of the terrorist attacks.” A sizable majority (77%) also found it frightening to watch – but most did so anyway.

Americans were enraged by the attacks, too. Three weeks after 9/11 , even as the psychological stress began to ease somewhat, 87% said they felt angry about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Fear was widespread, not just in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the fall of 2001. Most Americans said they were very (28%) or somewhat (45%) worried about another attack . When asked a year later to describe how their lives changed in a major way, about half of adults said they felt more afraid, more careful, more distrustful or more vulnerable as a result of the attacks.

Even after the immediate shock of 9/11 had subsided, concerns over terrorism remained at higher levels in major cities – especially New York and Washington – than in small towns and rural areas. The personal impact of the attacks also was felt more keenly in the cities directly targeted: Nearly a year after 9/11, about six-in-ten adults in the New York (61%) and Washington (63%) areas said the attacks had changed their lives at least a little, compared with 49% nationwide. This sentiment was shared by residents of other large cities. A quarter of people who lived in large cities nationwide said their lives had changed in a major way – twice the rate found in small towns and rural areas.

The impacts of the Sept. 11 attacks were deeply felt and slow to dissipate. By the following August, half of U.S. adults said the country “had changed in a major way” – a number that actually increased , to 61%, 10 years after the event .

A year after the attacks, in an open-ended question, most Americans – 80% – cited 9/11 as the most important event that had occurred in the country during the previous year. Strikingly, a larger share also volunteered it as the most important thing that happened to them personally in the prior year (38%) than mentioned other typical life events, such as births or deaths. Again, the personal impact was much greater in New York and Washington, where 51% and 44%, respectively, pointed to the attacks as the most significant personal event over the prior year.

Just as memories of 9/11 are firmly embedded in the minds of most Americans old enough to recall the attacks, their historical importance far surpasses other events in people’s lifetimes. In a survey conducted by Pew Research Center in association with A+E Networks’ HISTORY in 2016 – 15 years after 9/11 – 76% of adults named the Sept. 11 attacks as one of the 10 historical events of their lifetime that had the greatest impact on the country. The election of Barack Obama as the first Black president was a distant second, at 40%.

The importance of 9/11 transcended age, gender, geographic and even political differences. The 2016 study noted that while partisans agreed on little else that election cycle, more than seven-in-ten Republicans and Democrats named the attacks as one of their top 10 historic events.

9/11 transformed U.S. public opinion, but many of its impacts were short-lived

It is difficult to think of an event that so profoundly transformed U.S. public opinion across so many dimensions as the 9/11 attacks. While Americans had a shared sense of anguish after Sept. 11, the months that followed also were marked by rare spirit of public unity.

Patriotic sentiment surged in the aftermath of 9/11. After the U.S. and its allies launched airstrikes against Taliban and al-Qaida forces in early October 2001, 79% of adults said they had displayed an American flag. A year later, a 62% majority said they had often felt patriotic as a result of the 9/11 attacks.

Moreover, the public largely set aside political differences and rallied in support of the nation’s major institutions, as well as its political leadership. In October 2001, 60% of adults expressed trust in the federal government – a level not reached in the previous three decades, nor approached in the two decades since then.

George W. Bush, who had become president nine months earlier after a fiercely contested election, saw his job approval rise 35 percentage points in the space of three weeks. In late September 2001, 86% of adults – including nearly all Republicans (96%) and a sizable majority of Democrats (78%) – approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president.

Americans also turned to religion and faith in large numbers. In the days and weeks after 9/11, most Americans said they were praying more often. In November 2001, 78% said religion’s influence in American life was increasing, more than double the share who said that eight months earlier and – like public trust in the federal government – the highest level in four decades .

Public esteem rose even for some institutions that usually are not that popular with Americans. For example, in November 2001, news organizations received record-high ratings for professionalism. Around seven-in-ten adults (69%) said they “stand up for America,” while 60% said they protected democracy.

Yet in many ways, the “9/11 effect” on public opinion was short-lived. Public trust in government, as well as confidence in other institutions, declined throughout the 2000s. By 2005, following another major national tragedy – the government’s mishandling of the relief effort for victims of Hurricane Katrina – just 31% said they trusted the federal government, half the share who said so in the months after 9/11. Trust has remained relatively low for the past two decades: In April of this year, only 24% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time.

Bush’s approval ratings, meanwhile, never again reached the lofty heights they did shortly after 9/11. By the end of his presidency, in December 2008, just 24% approved of his job performance.

U.S. military response: Afghanistan and Iraq

With the U.S. now formally out of Afghanistan – and with the Taliban firmly in control of the country – most Americans (69%) say the U.S. failed in achieving its goals in Afghanistan.

But 20 years ago, in the days and weeks following 9/11, Americans overwhelmingly supported military action against those responsible for the attacks. In mid-September 2001, 77% favored U.S. military action, including the deployment of ground forces, “to retaliate against whoever is responsible for the terrorist attacks, even if that means U.S. armed forces might suffer thousands of casualties.”

Many Americans were impatient for the Bush administration to give the go-ahead for military action. In a late September 2001 survey, nearly half the public (49%) said their larger concern was that the Bush administration would not strike quickly enough against the terrorists; just 34% said they worried the administration would move too quickly.

Even in the early stages of the U.S. military response, few adults expected a military operation to produce quick results: 69% said it would take months or years to dismantle terrorist networks, including 38% who said it would take years and 31% who said it would take several months. Just 18% said it would take days or weeks.

The public’s support for military intervention was evident in other ways as well. Throughout the fall of 2001, more Americans said the best way to prevent future terrorism was to take military action abroad rather than build up defenses at home. In early October 2001, 45% prioritized military action to destroy terrorist networks around the world, while 36% said the priority should be to build terrorism defenses at home.

Initially, the public was confident that the U.S. military effort to destroy terrorist networks would succeed. A sizable majority (76%) was confident in the success of this mission, with 39% saying they were very confident.

Support for the war in Afghanistan continued at a high level for several years to come. In a survey conducted in early 2002, a few months after the start of the war, 83% of Americans said they approved of the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. In 2006, several years after the United States began combat operations in Afghanistan, 69% of adults said the U.S. made the right decision in using military force in Afghanistan. Only two-in-ten said it was the wrong decision.

But as the conflict dragged on, first through Bush’s presidency and then through Obama’s administration, support wavered and a growing share of Americans favored the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. In June 2009, during Obama’s first year in office, 38% of Americans said U.S. troops should be removed from Afghanistan as soon as possible. The share favoring a speedy troop withdrawal increased over the next few years. A turning point came in May 2011, when U.S. Navy SEALs launched a risky operation against Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed the al-Qaida leader.

The public reacted to bin Laden’s death with more of a sense of relief than jubilation . A month later, for the first time , a majority of Americans (56%) said that U.S. forces should be brought home as soon as possible, while 39% favored U.S. forces in the country until the situation had stabilized.

Over the next decade, U.S. forces in Afghanistan were gradually drawn down, in fits and starts, over the administrations of three presidents – Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Meanwhile, public support for the decision to use force in Afghanistan, which had been widespread at the start of the conflict, declined . Today, after the tumultuous exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, a slim majority of adults (54%) say the decision to withdraw troops from the country was the right decision; 42% say it was the wrong decision. 

There was a similar trajectory in public attitudes toward a much more expansive conflict that was part of what Bush termed the “war on terror”: the U.S. war in Iraq. Throughout the contentious, yearlong debate before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Americans widely supported the use of military force to end Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq.

Importantly, most Americans thought – erroneously, as it turned out – there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. In October 2002, 66% said that Saddam helped the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In April 2003, during the first month of the Iraq War, 71% said the U.S. made the right decision to go to war in Iraq. On the 15th anniversary of the war in 2018, just 43% said it was the right decision. As with the case with U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, more Americans said that the U.S. had failed (53%) than succeeded (39%) in achieving its goals in Iraq.

The ‘new normal’: The threat of terrorism after 9/11

There have been no terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 in two decades, but from the public’s perspective, the threat has never fully gone away. Defending the country from future terrorist attacks has been at or near the top of Pew Research Center’s annual survey on policy priorities since 2002.

In January 2002, just months after the 2001 attacks, 83% of Americans said “defending the country from future terrorist attacks” was a top priority for the president and Congress, the highest for any issue. Since then, sizable majorities have continued to cite that as a top policy priority.

Majorities of both Republicans and Democrats have consistently ranked terrorism as a top priority over the past two decades, with some exceptions. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have remained more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners to say defending the country from future attacks should be a top priority. In recent years, the partisan gap has grown larger as Democrats began to rank the issue lower relative to other domestic concerns. The public’s concerns about another attack also remained fairly steady in the years after 9/11, through near-misses and the federal government’s numerous “Orange Alerts” – the second-most serious threat level on its color-coded terrorism warning system.

A 2010 analysis of the public’s terrorism concerns found that the share of Americans who said they were very concerned about another attack had ranged from about 15% to roughly 25% since 2002. The only time when concerns were elevated was in February 2003, shortly before the start of the U.S. war in Iraq.

In recent years, the share of Americans who point to terrorism as a major national problem has declined sharply as issues such as the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic and racism have emerged as more pressing problems in the public’s eyes.

In 2016, about half of the public (53%) said terrorism was a very big national problem in the country. This declined to about four-in-ten from 2017 to 2019. Last year, only a quarter of Americans said that terrorism was a very big problem.

This year, prior to the U.S. withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan and the subsequent Taliban takeover of the country, a somewhat larger share of adults said domestic terrorism was a very big national problem (35%) than said the same about international terrorism . But much larger shares cited concerns such as the affordability of health care (56%) and the federal budget deficit (49%) as major problems than said that about either domestic or international terrorism.

Still, recent events in Afghanistan raise the possibility that opinion could be changing, at least in the short term. In a late August survey, 89% of Americans said the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was a threat to the security of the U.S., including 46% who said it was a major threat.

Addressing the threat of terrorism at home and abroad

Just as Americans largely endorsed the use of U.S. military force as a response to the 9/11 attacks, they were initially open to a variety of other far-reaching measures to combat terrorism at home and abroad. In the days following the attack, for example, majorities favored a requirement that all citizens carry national ID cards, allowing the CIA to contract with criminals in pursuing suspected terrorists and permitting the CIA to conduct assassinations overseas when pursuing suspected terrorists.

However, most people drew the line against allowing the government to monitor their own emails and phone calls (77% opposed this). And while 29% supported the establishment of internment camps for legal immigrants from unfriendly countries during times of tension or crisis – along the lines of those in which thousands of Japanese American citizens were confined during World War II – 57% opposed such a measure.

It was clear that from the public’s perspective, the balance between protecting civil liberties and protecting the country from terrorism had shifted. In September 2001 and January 2002, 55% majorities said that, in order to curb terrorism in the U.S., it was necessary for the average citizen to give up some civil liberties. In 1997, just 29% said this would be necessary while 62% said it would not.

For most of the next two decades, more Americans said their bigger concern was that the government had not gone far enough in protecting the country from terrorism than said it went too far in restricting civil liberties.

The public also did not rule out the use of torture to extract information from terrorist suspects. In a 2015 survey of 40 nations, the U.S. was one of only 12 where a majority of the public said the use of torture against terrorists could be justified to gain information about a possible attack.

Views of Muslims, Islam grew more partisan in years after 9/11

Concerned about a possible backlash against Muslims in the U.S. in the days after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush gave a speech to the Islamic Center in Washington, D.C., in which he declared: “Islam is peace.” For a brief period, a large segment of Americans agreed. In November 2001, 59% of U.S. adults had a favorable view of Muslim Americans, up from 45% in March 2001, with comparable majorities of Democrats and Republicans expressing a favorable opinion.

This spirit of unity and comity was not to last. In a September 2001 survey, 28% of adults said they had grown more suspicious of people of Middle Eastern descent; that grew to 36% less than a year later.

Republicans, in particular, increasingly came to associate Muslims and Islam with violence. In 2002, just a quarter of Americans – including 32% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats – said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. About twice as many (51%) said it was not.

But within the next few years, most Republicans and GOP leaners said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence. Today, 72% of Republicans express this view, according to an August 2021 survey.

Democrats consistently have been far less likely than Republicans to associate Islam with violence. In the Center’s latest survey, 32% of Democrats say this. Still, Democrats are somewhat more likely to say this today than they have been in recent years: In 2019, 28% of Democrats said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers than other religions.

The partisan gap in views of Muslims and Islam in the U.S. is evident in other meaningful ways. For example, a 2017 survey found that half of U.S. adults said that “Islam is not part of mainstream American society” – a view held by nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) but only 37% of Democrats. In a separate survey conducted in 2017, 56% of Republicans said there was a great deal or fair amount of extremism among U.S. Muslims, with fewer than half as many Democrats (22%) saying the same.

The rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 has had a profound effect on the growing number of Muslims living in the United States. Surveys of U.S. Muslims from 2007-2017 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. In many ways, 9/11 reshaped how Americans think of war and peace, their own personal safety and their fellow citizens. And today, the violence and chaos in a country half a world away brings with it the opening of an uncertain new chapter in the post-9/11 era.

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .