WATCH: Should students remember 9/11?

Campus Reform Correspondent Noelle Fitchett traveled to Texas A&M University to talk with college students about their thoughts on 9/11.

Students also reacted to a 2021 article published by a University of Wisconsin professor that alleged teaching about 9/11 could contribute to Islamophobia.


Campus Reform Correspondent Noelle Fitchett traveled to Texas A&M University to talk with college students about their thoughts on 9/11. 

Fitchett asked respondents if they thought it was essential for college students to memorialize 9/11.

”If we forget why 9/11 happened, then we will forget to protect our freedoms,” one student remarked.

[RELATED: BREAKING NEWS: Student group labeled as Nazis during 9/11 tabling event]

”There’s a lot of bad things that happen in the world and if we don’t remember those things we’re just going to make the same mistakes again,” another student said.

Fitchett then brought up a 2021 article written by Dr. Jeremy Stoddard, a Professor and Faculty Chair of the Secondary Education Program at the University of Wisconsin, titled “Teaching about 9/11 and Terrorism and Against Islamophobia.”

The article suggested that teaching about 9/11 “as a memory event” relies on “video footage that reinforces a narrative of a shocking attack by Muslim terrorists.” 

[RELATED: WATCH: Do students fear another 9/11 event?]

Stoddard stated that teaching about 9/11 shouldn’t be “entirely” discontinued, but that teachers should work with students to “directly question students and their sources of information/disinformation[.]”

One student reacted by saying, “It sounds to me like historical erasure, like removing ideas with different people groups that have negative connotations. I disagree with it.”

Overall, the students acknowledged that generalizations about groups should not be made, but that 9/11 and the lives that were lost should not be forgotten. 

Watch the full video above.

Follow @NoelleFitchett on Twitter.