The September 11 attacks and their aftermath are a living laboratory for those wishing to better understand how individuals, groups, and organizations respond under extreme disaster conditions. Along with other major disaster events, September 11 revealed much about institutional responses and collective behavior in crises, underscoring what is already known about the social processes that […]
Terrorist attacks on and since September 11th have stimulated public soul-searching, military and diplomatic responses, and efforts to reform public policy. Both the attacks and responses to them have raised a host of questions about social organization, basic social institutions, how people mobilize amid crises, and how differences of culture and politics shape conflict and cooperation.
This website features an extraordinary and still-expanding collection of essays by leading social scientists from around the country and the world. These are efforts by social scientists to bring theoretical and empirical knowledge to bear on the events of Sept. 11, their precursors, and what comes after.
We have asked the authors of these essays to write against two-week deadlines. Much to their credit they have obliged, even when it is difficult to come by sure knowledge in a time of quickly changing circumstances.
These essays are intended as resources for teachers—especially college and university instructors—who want to address the unfolding events in their courses from the perspectives of the social sciences. We hope they may also serve journalists and others who seek a guide to academic knowledge related to these events. Not least they are for all of us who seek deeper understanding in troubling times.
Ten years after these essays were published, contributors to After September 11 were asked to reflect on what they wrote and to explore what had changed and what remained the same since those harrowing times, resulting in the essay collection 10 Years after September 11.
After September 11
Neo-Fundamentalism
by Olivier Roy
More than twenty years after the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the wave of Islamic radicalism that has engulfed the Middle East since the late 1970s is taking a different course. The mainstream Islamist movements have shifted from the struggle for a supranational Muslim community into a kind of Islamo-nationalism: they want to […]
After September 11
Protecting Afghan Civilians from the Hell of War
by Nicholas Wheeler
We did not start this war. So understand, responsibility for every single casualty in this war, whether they’re innocent Afghans or innocent Americans, rests at the feet of the al Qaeda and the Taliban (Donald H. Rumsfeld, 4 December 2001). Michael Walzer dubbed blaming your enemy for the cruelty of war as the ‘War is […]
After September 11
A Human Rights Approach to Sept. 11
by Kathryn Sikkink
As we try to come to grips with the tragedy of September 11, as individuals and as social scientists, a human rights approach can provide some guidance. A human rights approach always begins with—and has as its essence—a concern with individual victims of rights abuses. We turn first to the victims of the September 11 […]
After September 11
A Roadmap for Afghanistan
by Radha Kumar
As the war in Afghanistan nears its end, and formerly warring Afghan factions work on a future order for the country, the signals are both good and bad. On the positive side, Afghan leaders meeting in Bonn have inched towards a broad-based government that will place humanitarian aid, stabilization and reconstruction at the top of […]