Professor David Mednicoff, who teaches "Explaining Terror" at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

In an Ambitious Course, Students Grapple with 9/11

Teachers who strive to help their students make sense of recent events face a number of pedagogical challenges--without the benefit of historical distance, they often must work with limited information or improvise in the classroom--and these challenges only become more daunting when the events under consideration are as seemingly incomprehensible as the attacks of September 11, 2001. Despite these difficulties, however, over the past three years teachers at every educational level have addressed 9/11, its causes, and its aftermath. Four of these teachers were recently honored by Dickinson College's Clarke Center for the Study of Contemporary Issues for their "best practices" in teaching about 9/11.

Among the recipients of Dickinson's "Teaching 9-11" awards was David Mednicoff, a professor of Legal Studies with affiliations in public policy, Judaic, Near Eastern, and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Mednicoff realized early on that college students needed to respond intellectually as well as emotionally to 9/11, and in the spring of 2002, he developed "Explaining Terror: The Middle East and the U.S.," an interdisciplinary course designed to engage students with the global issues surrounding the terrorist attacks. Mednicoff has continued to teach the course since then, adjusting its contents to reflect new developments in the "war on terror" while preserving its core goal: to give students the tools they need to ask their own questions and reach their own conclusions about terrorism and U.S. policies toward the Middle East.

Explaining Terror

The syllabus for "Explaining Terror" focuses on three distinct sets of issues: the history and politics of the Middle East, the nature of Islam, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Familiarity with these issues, David Mednicoff says, equips students with some of the basic knowledge they need to understand the roots of terrorism: "The question is for students to decide for themselves what, if any, of these particular issues might have had something to do with the level of hostility within the Middle East that led some people to carry out these particularly awful attacks."

Although he places special emphasis on recent history, Professor Mednicoff stresses that "Explaining Terror" is not a current events course. Instead, it examines the historical, political, and cultural contexts in which recent events can be more fully understood. Students thus are introduced to topics ranging from the post-World War I division of the Middle East by Britain and France to the effects of globalization on the region, from the founding of Israel and the rise of pan-Arabism to the rise of Islamist movements.

The campus of Dickinson College, which hosts the "Teaching 9-11" Web site and recently selected teachers for national "best practices" awards. Photo © A. Pierce Bounds.

Such a course is of necessity interdisciplinary and global in scope. And while there are drawbacks to teaching so much material in a single class, Mednicoff's approach has the advantage of compelling students to synthesize information and consider how the United States connects to the world. "I'm aware that I'm not covering as much ground in any one of these a as I might if I were teaching a basic intro to Middle Eastern politics or an intro to U.S. foreign policy," he says, "but my intent is to really get students to think about those things in tandem as a way of resolving a lot of the questions they ask themselves."

Mednicoff also strives to make students feel comfortable as they answer these questions. Well aware of the charged nature of the course's subject matter, he has devised several pedagogical strategies to ensure that his students develop independent views of the issues and that they feel "safe" in expressing them. Mednicoff himself makes a point of not offering personal opinions on topics discussed in class, and his course reader includes articles that represent diverse disciplinary and political perspectives. He also provides different forums in which students can express themselves: in addition to regular classroom discussions, he uses "low-stakes" writing assignments, small group discussions, and a threaded online discussion board to give students varied opportunities to test and refine their arguments. Together, these forums are meant to "model the importance of comfortable, free, and respectful expression."

Making Citizenship Meaningful

Professor Mednicoff hopes that his course will lead students to become engaged with broader, public conversations about U.S. foreign policy. But he also points out that there are significant hurdles to building such engagement. In the context of the university, he says, "we need to protect intellectual freedom to facilitate our students' sense that their citizenship has meaning." Students also don't always see how global issues bear upon their citizenship. Even today, Mednicoff has found, many students entering his class cannot locate countries like Iraq and Israel on a map--a symptom of wider disengagement with the world beyond America's borders. Finally, he says, in the culture at large, college students need to be told that their ideas matter. "Students will want to be involved and to connect to public life to the extent that they think they might be taken seriously."

In "Explaining Terror," Mednicoff uses an intensive small group assignment as a way of reinforcing students' confidence in their ability to participate meaningfully in public discourse. As part of the assignment, small groups of students select an issue relevant to the course--the war in Iraq, for example--at the beginning of the semester; then, during the course of the semester, each group develops foreign policy recommendations on their issue. By the time the groups finally present their recommendations at the end of the semester, many of the students have come to see that they can contribute to the conversation about America's role in the world--and indeed, that their recommendations, if implemented, could make a genuine difference in an embattled region.

Mednicoff hopes that some of his students will go on to careers in public service, and he is in awe of what some of his former students have gone on to do (including one student who, after taking his course in 2002, was sent to Afghanistan, and who, upon returning, enrolled in another of his classes). He also reminds his students that they can remain engaged in other, less dramatic ways--by keeping up with current events, contacting public officials, or participating in exchange programs.

Above all, Professor Mednicoff emphasizes our responsibility to help students understand that global issues--especially, at this historical moment, issues involving the Middle East--are relevant to their lives. "When I or somebody else says to my students, 'It's really important what you learn about the Middle East,' or, 'It's really important what you think about the Middle East, whether or not you're serving in the military, our country is very involved,' they take that very seriously," he says. "The problem is that not enough people tell them that."

"Educating students for a world lived in common" is one of the four goals guiding all of AAC&U's work: as the Greater Expectations report puts it, "Liberal education has the strongest impact when students look beyond their classroom to the world's major questions, asking students to apply their developing analytical skills and ethical judgment to significant problems in the world around them." More information about AAC&U's efforts to promote global learning and civic engagement is available on our resources pages.

More information about Dickinson College's "best practices" awards, including information about the other recipients of the award, is available at the Clarke Center's Teaching 9-11 Web site. The site also contains links to 9/11-related syllabi, lesson plans, articles, and other useful resources.