RIVERSIDE — The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, continue to impact American culture, politics and foreign policy as well as global security and relations between allies. These University of California, Riverside faculty have published research or can offer new insights into how the events of Sept. 11 changed Americans, the United States and the world, and what lies ahead.
Cell phone numbers are available upon request.
Arts, culture and media
Charles Evered, associate professor of theater
chuck.evered@ucr.edu
Evered, a Navy Reserve officer, was at Ground Zero a few days after the attacks. “It changed me forever,” he says. Evered was one of a handful of New York playwrights who were invited to write for the Brave New World showcase commemorating the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11. His 10-minute play about a sophisticated couple from New York City who forget they’ve volunteered to “adopt” a sailor for dinner during Fleet Week became a full-length play and a feature-length movie that starred Bebe Neuwirth, Peter Coyote and Ethan Peck. “Adopt a Sailor” focuses on a young sailor heading off to war and the sacrifices of men and women in the armed forces. “It’s about how just because we hold different viewpoints that doesn’t make us unpatriotic,” Evered says. To commemorate the 10-year anniversary he wrote a short play, “TEN,” that will premiere Sept. 10 at the Solley Theater at The Arts Council of Princeton, N.J. The play tells the story of a woman at a train station in New Jersey who is still waiting for her husband to get off the train she put him on 10 years ago, on Sept. 11, and the police officer who tries to help her move on.
Augustine J. Kposowa, professor of sociology
augustine.kposowa@ucr.edu
The United States overreacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the consequences have not been good for America or the world, Kpsowa says. "The attacks could have been used as important lessons for the nation. But we have not asked these questions: Why was the United States attacked? What have been the consequences of America’s reaction to those attacks? What is the end game? Our response was to launch two wars, in one case attacking a country that played no role in Sept. 11. The country has changed in a way that is not ideal." The U.S. created a huge bureaucracy — Homeland Security — that must be supported financially and Americans continue to be subjected to humiliating experiences at airports, he says. "In the United States, we do not address the root causes of problems; rather, we respond to their external manifestations. If anyone dares to challenge the prevailing opinion, he or she is labeled un-American or even anti-American. Osama bin Laden may well be dead, but the U.S. response to the attacks he inspired suggest that he achieved some of what he wanted."
Laila Lalami, associate professor of creative writing
laila.lalami@ucr.edu
“Americans’ collective memory of Sept. 11 is that of an airliner crashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center,” Lalami says. “This image has shaped how Americans see their country: as a victim of foreign aggression, as a bulwark against dark forces of Islamic fundamentalism, and as a seeker of justice for those who had died. But in the 10 years that have followed, America went on to create a whole new story around itself abroad. The peoples of North Africa and the Middle East also have a collective memory shaped around a series of images: that of the shock and awe of March 20 in Baghdad, of hooded prisoners in orange jumpsuits on their knees at Guantánamo Bay, of a pyramid of naked men at Abu Ghraib prison. The way in which America’s story has unfolded in the last 10 years has defied all of our imaginations.” Lalami is the author of “Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits” and “Secret Son.” She has written about North Africa for the Nation, the Daily Beast, and Foreign Policy, among many other publications.
Toby Miller, professor and chair of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies
toby.miller@ucr.edu
Television news has not adequately reported on fundamental issues and the influence of the United States around the world. The impacts are enormous when it comes to public ignorance regarding peace, militarism and the environment, Miller says. “The international political content of news has diminished significantly (since 1981), excusing and excluding U.S. citizens from a vital part of the policy process — informed public comment, dissent and consent.” TV coverage of governmental, military and international affairs dropped from 70 percent of network news in 1977 to 60 percent in 1987 and 40 percent in 1997, he notes. Miller’s book, “Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age” (Temple University Press, 2007), includes a chapter on media coverage of Sept. 11 and the Iraq invasion.
Jonathan Ritter, assistant professor of music
jonathan.ritter@ucr.edu
Ritter, the co-author of “Music in the Post-9/11 World” (Routledge in 2007), says that people around the world continue to turn to music as a way of making sense of the events of Sept. 11 and their aftermath. “Within the United States, such musical reactions ranged from contemplative laments to vitriolic odes of revenge, heard in contexts that ranged from the intimacy of private homes and community churches to the public stages of mass-mediated benefit concerts,” he says. Music also was used in more subtle ways: in television news coverage; in the kinds of music that classical music institutions chose to program or cancel; and in the decisions made by media corporations and musicians about what sort of music and types of messages were appropriate at the time. He continues to study musicians’ responses to global terror and intensified surveillance infrastructures, as well as the long-term impact of Sept. 11 on human rights.
Religion and ethics
Reza Aslan, associate professor of creative writing
aslanmedia@mac.com
Islam is undergoing an historic reformation, Aslan says, adapting itself to the realities of the world around it. The internationally known Iranian-American writer and scholar of religions is a regular commentator for American Public Media’s Marketplace and the Middle East analyst for CBS News, and has written for numerous national publications. His first book, “No god but God,” was published in 2005 and has been translated into half a dozen languages. A revised edition, with new material on the death of Osama bin Laden, Arab Spring, the women’s movement and how the Internet is changing Islam, will be released on Sept. 10. His second book, “How to Win a Cosmic War: Why We're Losing the War on Terror,” was published by Random House in 2009.
David Glidden, professor of philosophy
david.glidden@ucr.edu
In a 2002 article, “Borderline Disorders,” Glidden wrote on the nature of terrorism and the Sept. 11 attack from the point of view of social morality and male attachment disorders. Human beings are bound to one another out of a fellowship that is the foundation of community, he wrote. “The enemies of humanity, like Osama bin Laden, replace native fellow-feeling with apocalyptic ambition, to release resentment against a world they despise. And so terrorists search for whatever ideology, religious dogma or self-righteous cause that would invert value and depict evil as goodness. Cut off from community, they become the monsters of humanity.”
Howard Wettstein, professor of philosophy
howard.wettstein@ucr.edu
Wettstein has published on the topics of religious experience, awe, the problem of evil and the viability of philosophical theology. He is working on a book, “The Significance of Religious Experience,” that will be published by Oxford University Press. He can talk about his perspective of the Israeli/Palestinian crisis, based on his experiences lecturing at universities in Israel and Al-Quds University, the only Arab university in Jerusalem. His conversations with Palestinians while traveling in the region for more than 15 years and teaching philosophy at Al-Quds University have encouraged him. “When progress on political affairs seems stalled, perhaps it's time for human contact, person to person,” he says.
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