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Essays on 9/11

9/11 essay topics for college students.

Choosing the right essay topic is crucial in showcasing your creativity and personal interests. This page is designed to help you explore various types of essays and topics related to the events of 9/11, ensuring your work is both engaging and academically rewarding.

When selecting a 9/11 essay topic, consider focusing on different perspectives such as the historical context, the political aftermath, the personal stories of survivors, or the impact on international relations. You might explore the changes in U.S. foreign policy post-9/11, the development of security measures, or the social and cultural ramifications of the attacks. Analyzing the long-term effects on global terrorism and examining how the event reshaped global alliances are also compelling avenues. By choosing a specific angle that resonates with you, your essay will not only be informative but also reflect your unique viewpoint on this pivotal moment in history.

Good Titles for 9/11 Essays

• The Day That Changed the World: An Analysis of 9/11
• From Ground Zero to Recovery: The Aftermath of 9/11
• Unseen Heroes: The First Responders of 9/11
• The Global Impact of 9/11: A New Era in International Relations
• Resilience and Rebirth: The Story of Ground Zero
• 9/11 and the Evolution of National Security
• Personal Stories of Survival and Loss: Remembering 9/11
• The Psychological Scars of 9/11: Healing and Recovery
• Media, Memory, and 9/11: How the Attacks Shaped Public Perception
• The Legacy of 9/11: Changes in U.S. Foreign Policy

By exploring a variety of topics related to 9/11, you can broaden your knowledge and hone your critical thinking skills.

9/11 Essay Topics to Write about

Argumentative essay topics for 9/11 essay.

• The impact of 9/11 on national security
• The role of conspiracy theories in shaping public opinion
• The ethical implications of the war on terror
• The effect of 9/11 on immigration policies
• Changes in airline security post-9/11
• How 9/11 influenced U.S. foreign policy
• The economic repercussions of 9/11 on global markets
• The psychological impact of 9/11 on American society
• The evolution of counter-terrorism strategies post-9/11
• The influence of 9/11 on international relations and global politics
• Introduction Paragraph Example: Analyze the effects of the 9/11 attacks on national security and consider the lasting implications for our nation. This essay will explore the complexities of balancing security measures with civil liberties, ultimately arguing for a more transparent and accountable approach to protecting our country.
• Conclusion Paragraph Example: In conclusion, the events of 9/11 have fundamentally altered our understanding of national security. By examining the ethical dilemmas and practical challenges that arise in the aftermath of such attacks, we can work towards a more secure and just society.

Descriptive Essay Topics for 9/11 Essay

• The emotional impact of 9/11 on American society
• The physical devastation of the World Trade Center towers
• The heroism of first responders on that fateful day
• The immediate aftermath of the attacks in New York City
• The global reaction to the 9/11 attacks
• The rebuilding of Ground Zero
• The stories of survivors and their experiences
• The changes in New York City's skyline post-9/11
• The role of memorials and commemorations in preserving the memory of 9/11
• The atmosphere and tension in the U.S. in the days following 9/11
• Introduction Paragraph Example: Explore the emotional aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on American society, delving into the personal stories of those affected by this tragedy. By examining the human experience of loss, resilience, and hope, this essay will paint a vivid picture of the lasting impact of 9/11.
• Conclusion Paragraph Example: Through the lens of personal narratives and historical accounts, we can better understand the profound impact of 9/11 on individuals and communities. By honoring the memories of those lost and celebrating the resilience of survivors, we can ensure that the legacy of 9/11 endures.

Expository Essay Topics for 9/11 Essay

• How 9/11 changed international relations
• The history and significance of the 9/11 Memorial
• The role of media coverage during and after 9/11
• The economic impact of the 9/11 attacks
• The psychological effects of 9/11 on survivors
• The legislative changes following 9/11, such as the Patriot Act
• The influence of 9/11 on airport security measures worldwide
• The response of emergency services during the 9/11 attacks
• The impact of 9/11 on U.S. military strategy and operations
• The role of intelligence agencies before and after 9/11
• Introduction Paragraph Example: Examine how 9/11 changed international relations, focusing on the shift in global alliances and the rise of new security protocols. This essay will provide a comprehensive overview of the political, economic, and social changes initiated by the attacks, highlighting their lasting influence on global dynamics.
• Conclusion Paragraph Example: In summary, 9/11 has left an indelible mark on international relations, prompting a reevaluation of global security strategies and diplomatic approaches. By understanding these changes, we can appreciate the interconnectedness of our world and the importance of cooperation in addressing global threats.

Narrative Essay Topics for 9/11 Essay

• A personal account of witnessing the 9/11 attacks
• The story of a survivor’s journey to recovery
• The experience of a first responder on 9/11
• Recollections of the immediate days following 9/11
• How 9/11 influenced a career choice in public service or the military
• The impact of 9/11 on a specific community
• A family’s experience of losing a loved one in the attacks
• The perspective of a child growing up in the post-9/11 era
• The journey of a volunteer who helped in the aftermath of the attacks
• The story of a foreigner’s view of 9/11 and its global implications
• Introduction Paragraph Example: Share a personal account of witnessing the 9/11 attacks, capturing the raw emotions and immediate reactions to the tragedy. This essay will weave together personal memories with historical context, offering a poignant and intimate perspective on one of the most defining moments in recent history.
• Conclusion Paragraph Example: By narrating personal experiences of 9/11, we can preserve the emotional and historical significance of that day. These stories serve as powerful reminders of the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring importance of unity in the face of adversity.

As you explore these essay topics, remember to engage your readers with compelling arguments, vivid descriptions, and thought-provoking insights. Use your unique perspective and voice to make your essay stand out and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

9/11 Thesis Statement Ideas

Here are some thesis statement ideas for essays about the events of 9/11:

• The 9/11 attacks fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy, leading to the War on Terror and significant shifts in international relations.
• The impact of 9/11 on civil liberties in the United States demonstrates the tension between national security and individual freedoms.
• The psychological effects of the 9/11 attacks on survivors and first responders highlight the need for comprehensive mental health support systems.
• Examining the changes in airport security post-9/11 reveals how the attacks reshaped global travel regulations and practices.
• The media's portrayal of 9/11 influenced public perception and policy decisions, showcasing the power of media in times of crisis.
• The socio-economic repercussions of 9/11 on New York City underscore the resilience and recovery efforts of affected communities.
• The role of intelligence failures leading up to 9/11 highlights the necessity for improved interagency communication and data sharing.
• The global rise of Islamophobia post-9/11 reflects the broader implications of terrorism on societal attitudes and policies.
• The influence of 9/11 on American cultural and artistic expressions underscores the event's profound impact on national identity and memory.
• The legislative aftermath of 9/11, including the Patriot Act, illustrates the balance between enhancing security and protecting constitutional rights.

The Impact of 9/11 on U.s. Policy and Society

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The Impact of The 9/11 Tragedy on The Marketplace in The Reluctant Fundamentalist

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Conspiracy Theory: No Truth About 9/11

9/11 attacks: facts, background and impact, the events that led to the 9/11 crisis in the united states, different reactions on the 9/11 tragedy in america, the 9/11 terrorist attacks: the dark day in us history, analysis of the 9/11 attacs in terms of aristotelian courage, 9/11: discussion about freedom in the united states, analysis of 9/11 incident as a conspiracy theory, an analysis of the united states foreign policy in the post 9/11 period, a research of 9/11 conspiracy theory, the growth of islamophobia after 9/11 in the united states of america, terrorism on american soil, 11 of september 2001: analysis of the tragedy and its conspiracies, the patriot act should be abolished, depiction of 9/11 in extremely loud and incredibly close movie, the history and background of 9/11 memorial, ian mcewan’s saturday: criticism of the post-9/11 society, cia's torture of detainees after twin towers' tragedy, 9/11: a day never forgotten, parallels between pearl harbor and 9/11 attack.

September 11, 2001: Lower Manhattan (New York), Arlington County (Virginia), Stonycreek Township (Pennsylvania)

Deaths: 2,977 + 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists. Injured: 6,000–25,000+

On September 11, 2001, the United States experienced one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in its history. Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes, crashing two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers intervened. The attacks resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, significant destruction, and long-lasting psychological and economic impacts. In response, the U.S. launched the War on Terror, leading to military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and implemented sweeping changes in national security policies and practices.

The 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the extremist group al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, in response to perceived injustices faced by Muslims, including U.S. military presence in the Middle East. The terrorists exploited vulnerabilities in aviation security to target symbolic landmarks in the U.S., resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths. Factors such as ideological radicalization, recruitment efforts, and meticulous planning, along with geopolitical conflicts and intelligence failures, set the stage for this tragic event.

The 9/11 attacks had profound effects, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and significant destruction, including the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Socio-political impacts included heightened fear, stricter security measures, and increased surveillance. The attacks also influenced U.S. foreign policy, leading to military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Economically, the destruction affected global markets and caused job losses. Psychologically, the attacks left lasting trauma and grief among survivors, victims' families, and affected communities.

• The Twin Towers collapsed shortly after being hit: the South Tower (WTC 2) fell 56 minutes after impact, and the North Tower (WTC 1) fell 102 minutes after. These failures demonstrated the attacks' devastating impact.
• The 9/11 attacks resulted in 2,977 deaths from over 90 countries, including office workers, first responders, tourists, airline passengers, and business attendees.
• The attacks caused an estimated $123 billion loss in economic output within weeks, significantly disrupting tourism, aviation, and finance, affecting employment and global markets.

The topic of 9/11 is crucial as it profoundly impacted global politics, security, and society. Understanding the events and their consequences through various 9/11 essay topics helps us analyze the shifts in foreign policy, the rise of anti-terrorism measures, and the long-term psychological and economic effects. This analysis is essential for preventing future attacks and fostering a more secure and informed world.

1. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. W. W. Norton & Company. 2. Summers, A., & Swan, R. (2011). The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden. Ballantine Books. 3. Jenkins, B. M. (2006). The 9/11 Wars. Hill and Wang. 4. Smith, M. L. (2011). Why War? The Cultural Logic of Iraq, the Gulf War, and Suez. University of Chicago Press. 5. Bowden, M. (2006). Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam. Grove Press. 6. Wright, L. (2006). The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Vintage. 7. Bamford, J. (2008). The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. Anchor Books. 8. Thompson, W., & Thompson, S. (2011). The Disappearance of the Social in American Social Psychology. Cambridge University Press. 9. Boyle, M. (2007). Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us. Potomac Books. 10. Zelikow, P., & Shenon, P. (2021). The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Interlink Publishing Group.

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International Center for 9/11 Justice

The Journal of 9/11 Studies

The  Journal of 9/11 Studies  is the flagship publication of the International Center for 9/11 Justice. Since 2006, the journal has published more than 160 peer-reviewed papers, many of which have become foundational works in the 9/11 literature.

Today, its mission is to offer new evidence-based findings and perspectives regarding the events of September 11, 2001; to examine the wider societal consequences of 9/11; and to develop knowledge regarding similar or related “deep events” and State Crimes Against Democracy. (For guidance on the scope of the journal, please read IC911’s Research Agenda .)

The journal recognizes the importance of both multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity when researching the 9/11 crimes and is committed to advancing empirically and theoretically rigorous work. All submissions are subject to double-blind peer review.

The journal’s papers can also be found on the journal’s original website, Journalof911Studies.com . Our ISSN is: 2997-447X.

• Submit to the Journal

Recommended Articles

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Jonathan H. Cole, P.E., M.ASCE | July 2023

The Instantaneous Free Fall of World Trade Center Building 7 and NIST’s Attempt to Hide It

David Chandler, Ted Walter, and Tony Szamboti | June 2023

Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?

Steven E. Jones | September 2006

Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction

Steven E. Jones, Jeffrey Farrer, Gregory S. Jenkins, Frank Legge, James Gourley, Kevin Ryan, Daniel Farnsworth, and Crockett Grabbe | December 2007

The Missing Jolt: A Simple Refutation of the NIST-Bažant Collapse Hypothesis

Graeme MacQueen and Tony Szamboti | April 2009

Destruction of the World Trade Center North Tower and Fundamental Physics

David Chandler | February 2010

High Velocity Bursts of Debris from Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers

Kevin Ryan | June 2007

118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers

Graeme MacQueen | August 2006

Waiting for Seven: WTC 7 Collapse Warnings in the FDNY Oral Histories

Graeme MacQueen | January 2008

A Discussion of ‘Analysis of Structural Response of WTC 7 to Fire and Sequential Failures Leading to Collapse’

Ronald H. Brookman | October 2012

Plausibility of 9/11 Aircraft Attacks Generated by GPS-Guided Aircraft Autopilot Systems

Aidan Monaghan | October 2008

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Knowledge from Tragedy: NYU Research Post-9/11

© Hollenshead: Courtesy of NYU Photo Bureau

For many NYU scholars—some of them New Yorkers who witnessed the destruction of the World Trade Center from the vantage point of our Greenwich Village campus, less than two miles north—research has been an essential tool for better understanding the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. Over the past two decades, numerous faculty have studied 9/11’s impact on our physical and mental health; examined how to improve our nation’s security and preparedness; evaluated New York City’s infrastructure and resilience; analyzed the legal and policy consequences of the attacks; and captured painful and inspiring stories through art.

On the occasion of this anniversary, NYU News gathered a small sampling of projects that show how our researchers in diverse fields—whose efforts may carry personal as well as professional significance—rose to the occasion to generate knowledge and contribute to New York City’s recovery.

The psychological impact of the attacks

• Research by Silver’s Carol Tosone explored how the World Trade Center attacks affected the practice of therapists. After surveying Manhattan clinicians , she described the construct of shared trauma, which involves the dual impact of trauma on clinicians exposed both through their personal experiences and their work with survivors.
• Steinhardt researchers Beth Weitzman and Tod Mijanovich conducted a nationwide survey of youth and their parents before and after September 11 to examine psychological distress among American youth related to the attacks. They found that young people experienced more emotional distress after 9/11, and that those exposed to physical threats at school were especially vulnerable to the psychological effects of disasters.
• A special issue of the journal Traumatology , published in 2011, focused on reflections of NYU faculty, students, and administrators who were at the university on September 11. The articles offer insights into what the campus community experienced, as well as professional analyses on the impact of the event.
• Steinhardt art therapist Marygrace Berberian developed and facilitated a curriculum for post-9/11 recovery for children. The intervention culminated in a large installation of artwork across from Ground Zero , including self-portraits of more than 3,100 children from around the world.

The World Trade Center Children's Mural at 120 Broadway in 2002. Photo courtesy of Marygrace Berberian

Health and dangerous exposures 

• Research on 9/11 firefighters and EMS workers led by Anna Nolan and her team at the Grossman School of Medicine identified 30 chemical compounds that may help protect these first responders from losing lung function. These so-called metabolites are made when the body breaks down fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, and include protein-building amino acids and mega-3 fatty acids, which are found in fish and olive oil. The findings suggest that drugs, dietary changes, and regular exercise can protect people exposed to toxic chemicals created by fire and smoke.
• An investigation by Leonardo Trasande and his team at the Grossman School of Medicine found that children living near the World Trade Center who likely breathed in toxic dust have elevated levels of artery-hardening fats in their blood, an early indicator of future heart disease. The study , which analyzed blood tests from over 300 kids, is the first to identify long-term cardiovascular health risks in children from toxic chemical exposure on 9/11, but offers hope that early intervention like diet and exercise can alleviate some of the health risks.
• Research involving the School of Global Public Health’s Jack Caravanos examined lead and other environmental toxins in New York City following the attacks. One study found only low levels of lead in dust in lower Manhattan, likely due to the extensive cleanup of the area, but also identified several "hot spots" of environmental lead elsewhere, including one in Staten Island that may have been connected to debris from the World Trade Center.
• A study led by the College of Dentistry’s Karen Raphael evaluated more than 1,300 women in the New York metro area both before and after the attacks to see whether symptoms consistent with fibromyalgia—a disorder marked by widespread pain—increased. She found that rates of fibromyalgia-like pain did not grow significantly after the attacks regardless of direct exposure to events, nor did prior depression predict the onset of this pain, suggesting that exposure to major stressors or prior depression are unlikely to be major factors in the development of fibromyalgia.

© Getty Images

Skyscrapers, infrastructure, and downtown Manhattan’s recovery

• The World Trade Center Evacuation Study , led by the School of Global Public Health’s Robyn Gershon , examined factors that helped people to quickly and safely exit the towers during the attacks. The study found that evacuees with lower levels of preparedness were more likely to report fear of working in tall buildings, stress, anxiety, and flashbacks compared to evacuees who had more emergency training. The findings helped lead to the first changes in New York City’s high-rise fire safety codes in more than 30 years.
• The ability to rapidly restore transportation, power, water, and environmental services is critical after a disaster. This became the focus of work by Wagner’s Rae Zimmerman , who evaluated New York City’s infrastructure and user needs before, during, and after September 11. Her research found that the capability of service providers to respond to needs for transportation, energy, communication, water, sanitation, and waste removal after the attacks was influenced by the flexibility of the initial infrastructure design and existing functions to respond to normal system disruptions and to other extreme events.
• A 2015 report by the Rudin Center found that the rebuilding of the World Trade Center will generate an enormous economic return for the Port Authority and the New York region.  

Preparing for future threats

• In 2002, NYU established the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response with funding from Congress. The university-wide center, focused on improving the nation’s preparedness and response capabilities to terrorist threats and catastrophic events, coordinated and disseminated research and generated policy recommendations related to homeland security. Resulting research included reports on facial recognition technology , modeling to help hospitals prepare for disasters , and emergency medical services as the “forgotten first responder.”
• Soon after 9/11, the U.S. was faced with the potential for biological and chemical attacks, an area of focus for several researchers who are now part of the Tandon School of Engineering. Kalle Levon worked on the environmental detection of bioagents using funds from the Department of Defense and DARPA; Vikram Kapila conceived of a wireless sensor network to connect hazard-detecting sensors in New York’s subway stations; and Kurt Becker conducted research on the inactivation of biological and chemical agents, such as anthrax, as well as on sensing and quantifying trace concentrations of explosives . 
• Since many experts believed the next terrorist attack would be online, 9/11 was the impetus behind the creation of the Offensive Security, Incident Response, and Internet Security (OSIRIS) Lab , part of Tandon’s Center for Cybersecurity and led by Nasir Memon . Memon spearheaded a partnership with NYC Cyber Command , which leads the city’s cyber defense efforts, to run cybersecurity simulations to practice protecting the city’s systems from malicious attacks.

A 2019 cybersecurity training exercise with Tandon and NYC Cyber Command. Photo courtesy of NYU Tandon

Law and policy post-9/11

• The Reiss Center on Law and Security at the School of Law focuses on contemporary questions in the field of national security, including many that have arisen in the context of the “Forever War” that stemmed from September 11 and the evolution of power and legal authorities in the executive branch. In 2020, the Center published the War Powers Resolution Reporting Project , the first publicly accessible, searchable database analyzing the contents of more than 100 reports submitted by presidents to Congress, providing insights into the balance of powers between the branches with respect to how U.S. armed forces are used abroad.
• From 2005-2011, the then-Center on Law and Security also created a Terrorist Trial Report Card , a database that tracked the cases against alleged terrorists since 9/11, detailing the charges, convictions, plea bargains, and sentencing for federal terrorism prosecutions. In addition to the data collected in each of the 11 iterations of the report, the Terrorist Trial Report Card included analyses of the effectiveness of the "War on Terror" and the evolution in the Department of Justice's prosecution of these crimes. 
• The NYU Review of Law and Security , founded by the Center on Law and Security, published articles, updates on the Terrorist Trial Report Card, and transcript excerpts from major dialogues convened by the Center. Each issue centered on a timely topic in national security and counterterrorism, ranging from Al-Qaeda to the legal questions surrounding Guantanamo and the challenges of prosecuting terrorism.
• In The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror (Cambridge University Press, 2009), law professor and Reiss Center faculty co-director Stephen Holmes explored the causes of the “catastrophic turn” in American policy at home and abroad since 9/11. Holmes detailed Washington’s inability to bring “the enemy” into focus since 9/11, describing the ideological, bureaucratic, electoral, and emotional forces that distorted the American understanding of, and response to, the terrorist threat.
• Politics Professor Bernard Manin examined the history of emergency powers going all the way back to Rome—and argued that constitutional democracies should not use these measures to deal with terrorism. In an essay , he suggested that emergency powers only work well when implemented as temporary measures to deal with temporary threats, but with terrorism as a long-term problem, a different response was called for.

American culture after the attacks

• NYU Abu Dhabi sociologist John O’Brien spent over three years conducting ethnographic fieldwork with a group of young Muslim teenagers coming of age in post-9/11 America. His book, Keeping It Halal: The Everyday Lives of Muslim American Teenage Boys (Princeton University Press, 2017), illustrated how the teens faced anti-Muslim discrimination, but much of their lives centered around “normal” teenage problems, like music and dating.
• In a new book, Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era (NYU Press, 2022), Steinhardt’s Marika Sturken writes that the terrorist attacks were the primary force shaping U.S. politics and culture in the post-9/11 era. Her earlier book, Tourists of History (Duke University Press, 2007), argued that Americans have responded to the national trauma of September 11 through consumerism and kitsch, and explored the contentious debates about memorials and celebrity-architect designed buildings at Ground Zero.
• In " On The Actuarial Gaze: From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib ," Steinhardt's Allen Feldman considers the larger impact of circulated images. His analysis of pictures and video stemming from 9/11 illuminates the visual structure of catastrophes.
• In Tolerance and Risk: How U.S. Liberalism Racializes Muslims (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), Liberal Studies' Mitra Rastegar examines representations of Muslims in the media and writes that sympathetic representations cast Muslims as as a population with distinct characteristics, capacities, and risks.

Images courtesy of NYU Press

Catalyzing creative expression

• In 110 Stories: New York Writes after September 11 (NYU Press, 2002), Ulrich Baer gathered a range of voices that convey the shock and loss suffered in September 2001. The lineup of 110 renowned and emerging writers captured the shape and texture of a city in crisis, and what its inhabitants absorbed in the aftermath of a few unforgettable hours.
• Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Jonathan Safran Foer penned the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), which centers on a nine-year-old boy whose father died in 1 World Trade Center. The book—which was later made into a film—was among several that formed a new genre of writing shaped by the attacks.
• Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11 (Bonus Books, 2002), co-edited by journalism professor Mitchell Stephens , is an oral history of the events of that day in the words of more than 130 television and radio journalists, ranging from network anchors to local reporters from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  
• The 9/11 attacks inspired the composition of many artistic works, including a poem by Creative Writing’s Deborah Landau entitled “ Manhattan Fragments 2001-2002 ” and a musical composition by Steinhardt’s Faye-Ellen Silverman named “ Reconstructed Music ” (2002), which she began writing three days after the attacks.

This research was supported by funding from Congress, the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, among others.

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Seven Reflections Worth Reading About 9/11

Tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Not surprisingly, the last several weeks have seen the publication of a torrent of articles assessing the meaning and lessons of 9/11. It’s a topic that has been debated for twenty years and will continue to be debated for decades to come. The lessons that get drawn will inevitably change over time, just as we see 9/11 differently today than we did a decade ago. We inevitably see the past through the lens of the present.

With so much being written in so short a period of time, we can’t say that we have read everything that has been written, or claim to be able to say which essays will have the greatest or most lasting influence. What we offer below are simply seven articles that tackle critical questions and might give you reason to pause and think. You won’t see any articles written by our CFR colleagues. That’s because our rule for these posts is to avoid home-cooking. We no doubt have missed some terrific writing that would have made generating a list of seven articles even harder. To everyone who feels overlooked, we apologize.

United States

Bryan Bender and Daniel Lippman , " They Created Our Post-9/11 World: Here’s What They Think They Got Wrong ,”  Politico Magazine . Did I get it right? It’s a question we can all usefully ask of ourselves, even if we may not like the answer. Bender and Lippman interviewed a range of former senior Bush administration officials, U.S. senators, ambassadors, generals, and admirals about the decisions they made or helped shape in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Many of them look back with regret at what they see as U.S. “overreach” but hold out hope that the country can right itself. “Nations are like people,” retired Admiral James Stavridis notes, “They get some things right, they get some things wrong. The measure of any nation is whether it learns both from the mistakes and the successes.”

The Water's Edge

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Garrett Graff ,   " After 9/11, the U.S. Got Almost Everything Wrong ,"  The Atlantic . By one important measure the U.S. war on terrorism succeeded: neither al-Qaeda nor any other foreign terrorist organization has successfully launched an attack remotely approaching what happened on 9/11. Beyond that, Osama bin Laden and many of his close advisers have been captured or killed.   Garrett Graff argues that despite these successes, the U.S. response to 9/11 did more harm than good. “By almost any other measure, the War on Terror has weakened the nation,” he writes, “leaving Americans more afraid, less free, more morally compromised, and more alone in the world."

Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty , “ Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11 ,” Pew Research Center. What do Americans think about 9/11 twenty years on? Hartig and Doherty sort through data the Pew Research Center has compiled on public attitudes toward the deadliest day in U.S. history. They conclude that surveys show “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.”

Nelly Lahoud , “ Bin Laden’s Catastrophic Success ,”  Foreign Affairs . Did bin Laden succeed? Nelly Lahoud thinks not. While the 9/11 attacks inflicted a grievous wound on the United States, they did not produce the outcome he sought. Bin Laden thought the attacks would compel a fearful United States to withdraw its military forces from Muslim-majority countries, leaving al-Qaeda free to recreate an exclusive community of Muslims. What he got instead was a United States that stood up rather than backed down in response to his plot, intervening even more deeply in the Middle East. “Bin Laden did change the world,” she concludes, “just not in the ways that he wanted.”

Carlos Lozada , “ 9/11 Was a Test. The Books of the Last Two Decades Show How America Failed. ”  Washington Post . If you read our post on  Seven More Books to Read About 9/11 , you know that a vast literature now exists on 9/11, examining that day and its consequences from an array of angles. Carlos Lozada, the  Washington Post ’s terrific book critic, decided to read more than his fair share of them. The effort convinced him that “Bin Laden did not win the war of ideas. But neither did we. To an unnerving degree, the United States moved toward the enemy’s fantasies of what it might become—a nation divided in its sense of itself, exposed in its moral and political compromises, conflicted over wars it did not want but would not end….. al-Qaeda could not dim the promise of America. Only we could do that to ourselves.”  

George Packer , “ 9/11 Was a Warning of What Was to Come ,”  The Atlantic.  It may be difficult from the vantage point of 2021 to remember what the world looked like in early September 2001. The United States had won the Cold War. It was the world’s dominant power by far, perhaps the most powerful ever known. The laws of history had seemingly been suspended. The future promised continued success, wealth, and safety for decades to come. Looking back at those heady times, Packer concludes that 9/11 pricked the illusion that somehow Americans stood outside of time. “September 11 wasn’t a sui generis event coming out of a clear blue sky,” he writes. “It was the first warning that the 21st century would not bring boundless peace and prosperity.”

Stephen M. Walt . “ How 9/11 Will Be Remembered a Century Later ,”  Foreign Policy.  We noted above that our collective lessons of 9/11 are likely to change over time as the progress of events gives us new vantage points from which to see the past. Harvard Kennedy School of Government Professor Stephen Walt wondered what people might make of 9/11 on its centennial. He sees three possible scenarios: people might see it as a turning point, an isolated tragedy, or as irrelevant. Which of those scenarios carries the day, he writes, is not pre-ordained but rather depends on “what the United States and others do from this day forward.”

On Monday we will share additional resources on 9/11 that friends and readers politely (for the most part) noted that we missed.

Here are the other entries in this series:

• More Resources Worth Exploring About 9/11

Seven Documentaries Worth Watching About 9/11

• Seven Movies Worth Watching About 9/11
• 9/11 Online Exhibits and Resources Worth Viewing
• Seven Resources Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
• Seven Podcasts Worth Listening to About 9/11
• Seven More Books Worth Reading About 9/11 and Its Aftermath

Explore More

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20 Years Later: Experts Share Their Thoughts on How 9/11 Transformed Their Field, Their Research, and the World

By University of Pennsylvania September 11, 2021

Tribute in Light, an annual display near the site of Ground Zero, commemorates the September 11 attacks. Credit: Scott Spitzer

Experts across the University of Pennsylvania share their thoughts on how 9/11 transformed their field, their research, and the world.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Coming on the heels of the exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, America’s longest war and a response to the attacks, the anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of 9/11.

Penn Today asked experts across the University to share their thoughts on how 9/11 transformed their field or their research, the world, or their lives.

Leah Blain , clinical psychologist and director for the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic at Penn, where she oversees all clinical, administrative, and outreach operations

September 11 had a huge impact on the field of trauma recovery. Not only was 9/11 an unprecedented stressor unto itself, but the wars that followed had a massive impact in terms of helping us understand what happens when people experience immense amounts of stress, both from the stressors they experience and from being removed from supports like family. The silver lining is that with every stressor we study, we learn more about recovery.

Soldiers from the 1-505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, based in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, at a landing zone near the town of Keyki, Afghanistan on July 30, 2002. Credit: Courtesy of the Department of Defense/U.S. Army photographer Spc. Patrick Tharpe

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are benefiting from all that we learned from our Vietnam veterans and trauma survivors before them. The knowledge we’ve accumulated as a field means we now have evidence-based practices to offer people who are suffering from things like PTSD , depression, and moral injury from their service.

The clients we serve have often been on multiple deployments. Over the last 20 years, service members who originally signed up to be in the Reserves or National Guard have deployed at rates comparable to active-duty personnel. That’s very different from prior conflicts. And, approximately two million children in our country have had at least one parent serve since September 11, 2001, so that’s having a really important impact on our families. A common stressor for military families is inadequate access to behavioral health supports and services for family members during and after deployments. A big piece of our mission at the Cohen Clinic is being able to serve family members as well as veterans.

Post-9/11, we’ve learned lessons of what recovery can look like and now have the ability to apply those lessons in real time to support people who are facing deployments, currently serving, or are transitioning from the military to civilian life. We have learned so much about resilience and recovery. We can make an impact now. To me, that’s such an inspiring mission: to be able to give back to those who have been willing to sacrifice so much for all of us.

In light of what’s happening now in Afghanistan, I’m hearing people talk about it as if it’s an endpoint. But in our field, we know that this is going to have ripple effects for years to come. And we are ready, better armed to help our veterans and military family members recover and thrive.

Cynthia Otto , professor of Working Dog Sciences and Sports Medicine; director, Penn Vet Working Dog Center

Prior to September 11, 2001, my work with search and rescue dogs was an interesting hobby that utilized my veterinary emergency medicine training in a different environment and sparked interesting, but somewhat limited research questions. On September 11, when the planes hit the towers, the world reeled. I got the call to pack my bags and report to the Philadelphia Fire Academy as part of the Pennsylvania Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1, and my world shifted.

The 10 days spent caring for the dogs at Ground Zero reframed my career, starting with the launch of the American Kennel Club-Canine Health Foundation funded 15-year study of the health and behavioral effects of the response on search and rescue dogs. During that time, I began working with all types of working dogs. My research focus pivoted from the laboratory to the Labrador (and other working breeds). The unanswered questions and the opportunities to apply science and veterinary expertise to the health and performance of working dogs became my ultimate driving force.

After 10 years of planning, seeking funding and space, on September 11, 2012, we opened the Penn Vet Working Dog Center (PVWDC) as a research, education, and training resource for working dogs, focused on search and rescue and other types of scent detection dogs. At the time, the term “working dog” was relatively unfamiliar to the general public and the field of canine sports medicine was just finding its foot (paw) hold. True to the goal of being the legacy of 9/11, the PVWDC has been instrumental in transforming the science, care, training, and visibility of detection dogs. Bearing witness to the horror and humanity of that day, to the undeniable bond between human and animal, served as the catalyst for an extraordinary and fulfilling new period of my career; from veterinary emergency medicine to canine sports medicine.

Search dogs and handlers with the Pennsylvania Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1 at Ground Zero in the days after the attacks on September 11, 2001. From left to right, Chris Selfridge and Riley; Bobbie Snyder and Willow; Rose DeLuca and Logan; John Gilkey and Bear; and (back row) Cynthia Otto of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center. Credit: Courtesy of Cynthia Otto

Today the PVWDC has graduated over 100 detection dogs, trained hundreds of students and handlers, published 40 papers/reviews/chapters, provided congressional testimony and made “working dogs” a familiar and beloved topic. Just like the dogs at Ground Zero, the PVWDC has brought hope and promise through the noses and hearts of dogs.

Barbie Zelizer , Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, associate dean for research, and director of the Center for Media at Risk in the Annenberg School for Communication

The recollection of crisis is cluttered with before and after moments: before and after the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, the Trump presidency, COVID-19 . Bracketing time into before and after moments lets us separate objectionable or problematic circumstances from the drive to improve them. It’s no surprise, then, that the events of 9/11 are often framed as a demarcating point, segmenting, among other things, the U.S. media’s coverage of crisis into before and after moments. But how has post-9/11 crisis coverage changed from its earlier self, if at all?

Small monument to the victims of September 11 on a car lot fence on Greenwich and Seventh Avenues in New York City, August 11, 2004. Credit: Courtesy of David Iliff

The days following 9/11 spawned anguished hand wringing about where U.S. institutions, among them U.S. media, had gone wrong. The media’s unsatisfying coverage drew from well-established patterns that often framed events without context, glossed developments in simplicity and portrayed uncrossable camps between “us” and “them.” Calls for a new normal and for better coverage that could reflect more fully the positionalities of those being covered at first seemed to promise soul-searching and a nod toward more global understanding.

But 20 years later, little has changed. The world of the U.S. media is still largely bipolar, severed into two with little granularity, contemplation, or complexity. Coverage offers scant structural understanding of how and why crises unfold and hinders the development of meaningful intervention. And the media still refract distant crises through the prism of U.S. interests, shrinking and eliminating from coverage the positionalities that matter most.

Immediately after the events of 9/11, cries of “why us?” were everywhere. Twenty years later, those cries, though somewhat diminished, nonetheless impede change. As the gut-wrenching developments in Afghanistan accompany the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from a war begun in 9/11’s wake, a new before and after moment is developing. Maybe this time the media can resist its entrenchment and rather than ask “why us?” finally begin to ponder “why them?”

Roxanne L. Euben , Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences , School of Arts & Sciences

My first book out of graduate school focused on the political thought of a then-obscure Egyptian Islamist thinker named Sayyid Qutb. When the book was published in 1999, I assumed that precisely three people would read it, all family members. That radically changed in the immediate wake of 9/11, when fear, anger, and a hunger to make sense of the attacks cemented a shift, already underway, from a preoccupation with the Cold War to a focus on Islam, Islamism, and Muslims (often collapsed into one another). Almost any research on Islam moved from the margins to the epicenter of a country that seemed to be just waking up to how the rest of the world experiences U.S. power. At the same time, a new narrative of “Islam versus the West” had already begun to congeal, distorting the very political landscape it was imperative to understand.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld addresses reporters with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 7, 2003. Rumsfeld’s trip to Kabul was part of his scheduled tour of the Middle East. Credit: Staff Sgt. Keith Thompson

Yet even as many barriers hardened, a few fractured. From my vantage point, these events actually helped crack open the field in which I work, political theory, conventionally organized around a canon of ‘Western’ philosophical books from Plato to NATO. Arguments about the parochialism of academic fields organized almost entirely around the study of Euro-American books were nothing new. But the combination of accelerated globalization and 9/11 drove home, as perhaps nothing else could have, the high price of insularity.

It’s now no longer outlandish to argue that political theory is a practice of inquiry rather than the study of specific answers located in a ‘Western’ canon, that it’s a distinctive way of asking questions about what matters in collective life upon which no particular culture or epoch has a monopoly. This way of reframing political theory is more than just a call to add a Muslim or Indian thinker to a syllabus and stir. It’s a recognition that the most pressing questions—and answers—of political life exceed the experiences and preoccupations of Euro-American thinkers. It’s an insistence that such questions equally take shape through ideas, concepts, and arguments formulated by both unfamiliar thinkers from elsewhere and from within ‘the West,’ past and present. And it’s an exhortation to call into question the very narratives and categories we’ve invented to provide the comfort of order in a disorderly world—beginning with “Islam versus the West.”

Ken Lum , Marilyn Jordan Taylor Penn Presidential Professor and Chair of the Department of Fine Arts in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design

Like many, many people, I remember vividly the terrible day of September 11, 2001. I was on the telephone, a landline connection. It was early in the morning on the West Coast and I was speaking to a friend in New Haven, Connecticut. She was a newly hired professor of art history at Yale. I was excited for her, happy for her. From my high-up apartment in Vancouver, I could see the mountains change colors under the moving clouds. At some point in our conversation, Ann stopped speaking and there was only silence. After some moments she said: “You need to turn on your television set,” and I did so. I remember staring at the screen and feeling a sense of my own bodily presence in time and space as never before. I had forgotten that Ann was still on the line. But it turned out she had also forgotten about me.

The Twin Towers burn on the morning of September 11, 2001, as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge Promenade. Credit: Courtesy Michael Foran/Flickr

I hung up the phone. I returned to the screen and just stared and stared and stared. On some fathomless level, everything that I had held to be true or wanted so desperately to believe in was suddenly open to question. The staring at the screen was deracinating. The deepest truths and the darkest secrets inside and about me seemed to be bubbling up everywhere in my mind and body, like molten lava. Volcanic rivers continue to course through the world and into me. They continue to scald my sense of self and what art had meant for me up until that point.

My dissatisfaction with the insufficiency of art has only grown since then but it has also become the source of what propels me.

Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher , senior lecturer, Graduate School of Education

The 20th anniversary of 9/11 provides an opportunity not only to reflect on what happened that day but more importantly, on the ongoing ripple effects that continue to shape our world.

Many young Americans see 9/11 as a moment in history, something that “happened” long ago; something that doesn’t affect their life. But that’s not the case for Arab, Muslim, Sikh, African, and South-Asian communities in the United States. Several colleagues and I are finishing a four-year national qualitative study with 13-to 23-year-olds from Muslim-American immigrant communities across over a dozen states in the U.S. Despite not being alive in 2001, these youth described how 9/11 continues to cast a shadow over their everyday experiences.

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Anthony Buchanan of the Camp Atterbury Public Affairs Office gets a hug after reading a book to children of East Side Elementary School in Edinburgh, Ind. Soldiers were invited to participate in “Read with a Hero Day” to commemorate September 11, 2001. Credit: Sgt. 1st Class Russell Klika

My research largely informs a current endeavor, the Teaching Beyond September 11th curriculum project that provides educators lessons to help their students explore the attack’s lingering impact on everything from U.S. military interventions abroad, to questions about civil liberties, to changes in media representation. The curriculum is not just for 9/11: It’s for any time in the year. It’s no exaggeration to say that teaching young people to be more aware of this history is one of the most effective interventions that we have for upholding our democracy.

I was on the George Washington Bridge heading into Manhattan at the exact time of the 9/11 attacks. I had emigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan the year prior to start my new life as a graduate student and a newlywed. Following that surreal day, I witnessed the backlash and rise in hate crimes against Muslim, Arab, and Sikh communities across the U.S. In the years after, I was drawn to study and work with immigrant communities and I can tell you this: Twenty years can feel like a long time, but it rarely does for the groups directly impacted by 9/11. That’s why the work I do is so important to me and why reflecting beyond September 11 is necessary for us all.

Leah Blain serves as the Clinic Director for the Steven A. Cohen Military Family Clinic , where she oversees all clinical, administrative, and outreach operations. Her clinical work focuses on trauma recovery, working with survivors of assault, abuse, and combat, on issues including depression, guilt and shame, anger, dissociation, and PTSD.

Barbie Zelizer is the Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, associate dean for research, and director of the Center for Media at Risk in the Annenberg School for Communication . A former journalist, Zelizer is known for her work on culture, memory, and images, particularly in times of crisis and war.

Cynthia Otto is a professor of Working Dog Sciences & Sports Medicine in Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center .

Roxanne L. Euben is the Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences in the School of Arts & Sciences . Euben’s area of expertise and research is Muslim and Euro-American political thought, and her scholarship has addressed such topics as Muslim cosmopolitanism, jihad, and martyrdom and political action.

Ken Lum is a practicing artist, Marilyn Jordan Taylor Penn Presidential Professor and Chair of the Department of Fine Arts in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design .

Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher is a senior lecturer in the Literacy, Culture and International Education Division, and director of the International Educational Development Program, in the Graduate School of Education . Her research focuses on the socialization, academic engagement, and civic commitments of migrant children and youth, which has informed her curriculum projects. She also is the co-producer and host of The Parent Scoop podcast.

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September 1, 2011

Science after 9/11: How Research Was Changed by the September 11 Terrorist Attacks

New work in forensics, biodefense and cyber security blossomed after the attacks on New York City, Washington, D.C., and in the skies over Pennsylvania, but increased regulations have also stymied international collaboration as well as work on some infectious diseases

By Eugenie Samuel Reich

Two months after al Qaeda terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan on September 11, 2001, analytical chemist John Butler found himself working late nights in his lab, developing DNA assays to identify 911 victims from the tens of thousands of charred human remains recovered at Ground Zero. Thinking back, he still clearly remembers the sense of rising to a national need that was shared by dozens of researchers recruited to the same difficult problem. "People wanted to step up and help the country," he says.

Ten years on, Butler's solitary effort at National Institute of Standards and Technology has grown to a large research group working on the forensics of blended, degraded or soiled DNA, and U.S. expertise developed in the wake of 9/11 has also been exported worldwide, put to use identifying victims of mass atrocities in Africa, Asia, Bosnia and Iraq.

It is just one example of how a research direction blossomed as a result of 9/11. Scientists and science policy experts say the federal government's response to terrorist events in 2001, both the September attacks and the anthrax letters in October, have had a profound effect on U.S. research in areas as diverse as forensics, biodefense, infectious diseases, public health, cyber security, geology and infrastructure, energy, and nuclear weapons. Even the social sciences have been affected by the emergence of "terrorism studies" and the new emphasis on the threat in the field of risk analysis.

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A major conduit for the shifts is the availability of money: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), created by consolidating 22 federal services and agencies in 2002 in direct response to September 11, had a science budget that peaked at $1.3 billion in 2006 before falling again to about $700 million in 2011. Key science-funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy, also put money into research motivated by security concerns (amounting to a total homeland security (this number does not refer to DHS but to homeland security funding across all agencies) research budget of $7.3 billion in 2011) and a small amount of the U.S. Department of Defense money associated with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ended up in the hands of researchers as well—for example, by funding work on explosives detection and weaponry.

In biodefense, so much money poured into science that Judith Reppy, a science and technology studies expert at Cornell University, even considered whether (adapting the term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961) a "biomedical-military-industrial complex" has emerged in which scientists, the military and lobbyists conspire to try to keep the funds coming . She rejected that hypothesis, finding that biomedical science in the U.S. remains primarily a civilian endeavor, but says 9/11 has introduced trimmings of "guards, guns and gates," and increased funding research on pathogens that might be used by terrorists.

Some of the post-9/11 changes have entailed increased regulation. Jerry Jaax, a veterinarian and infectious disease researcher who oversees research compliance at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kans., says that many biomedical fields have been swamped by such new regulations or increased enforcement of pre-9/11 regulations in a bid to prevent researchers and the materials they handle from becoming security threats. He says federal rules on select agents—pathogens that require special facilities and handling—and on imports and exports of biological samples and materials, have slowed the ability of scientists to do research important to public and agricultural health. "Some say we're regulating away our ability to do this kind of research and I think there's some truth to that," he says.

And, a major difficulty has been immigration. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 imposed stringent new visa requirements that restricted scientists and science students from all over the world from entering the U.S. Albert Teich, who has tracked the issue for the American Association for the Advancement of Science where he is director of science and policy programs, says that problem peaked in 2003, but has since improved, especially following lobbying of Congress by scientific societies and advice from the National Academy of Sciences, whose 2009 report " Beyond 'Fortress America '" and 2007 report " Rising above the Gathering Storm " were among those to suggest the rules be eased. But the policies had a lasting impact on the ability of U.S. researchers to collaborate and recruit students, he says.

Teich adds that security concerns have cast a shadow over U.S. science in a number of ways, and points to the erection of a steel security barrier around the perimeter of the previously open campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. "To me," he says, "that fence is a very dramatic visual impact of 9/11 on science."

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 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.

September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties Essay

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Tuesday September 11, was a dark moment in New York after a terror attack on the World Trade Centre which left more than 3000 neighbors, friends, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, children and parents dead. The cleverly orchestrated attacks inflicted huge casualties on the American citizens. U. S. Officials later identified the attacker as a Pakistani-born, Khalid Sheik Mohammed who was the mastermind behind the attacks.

The terrorist attacks occurred at 8:45am with the first of the two hijacked American Airlines striking the World Trade Centre. At 9:03am, the second airliner crashed into the twin towers, leaving the building crumbling and in a blaze. Many people were left trapped in the building for long hours while others died.

The third plane crashed at 9:43 am at the Pentagon which is the US military base and the largest office building in the world. The south tower, after the attack, broke and fell apart and five minutes later, the remaining part of the Pentagon came down. According to police sources, the fourth jet crashed into Western Pennsylvania killing more than 100 people.

The police and the emergency staff quickly rushed into the scene to rescue the survivors. In the World Trade Center, the workplace to more than 40,000 workers, people had reported to work as other days and those that were on the 106 th floor died instantly while the rest in other floors could not escape from fire. As the police and the emergency staff trying to help those at the World Trade Center, the South tower, collapsed and tumbled down killing hundreds of the police and emergency personnel.

After the attacks a state of emergency ensued and all the flights grounded and all US borders closed. There were fears everywhere that similar attacks could occur and as a result precautionary evacuations took place especially on national buildings.

The then president, George Bush, who was also the commander-in-chief of the Defense forces, was flown to a safe and secure base in Nebraska and he and his deputy president were kept in different locations.

He later addressed the attacks that though they had shaken the growth of big buildings in America they had not weakened the hardworking and zealous citizens of America. He further added that there was no difference between those who perpetrated the attack and those who gave them shelter and he urged them to co-operate in the fight against terrorism.

American Airlines told CNN that they had lost their two planes both in their way to Los Angeles, American Flight 11 from Boston carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew and American Flight 11, a Boeing 757 from Washington Dulles Airport to Los Angeles carrying 58 passengers and six crew and from the witnesses, it is the American Bin 757 that hit Pentagon.

Those behind the attacks were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia managed by Osama Bin Laden, who had planned it for years. The hijackers of the Airliners were suicide bombers belonging to Al Qaeda.

The tragic attack on America has remained a historical representation and has reminded many to expect anything and to know that some occurrences are inevitable.

Its target was to destroy the World Trade Centre and to discipline the Americans as well as to impede the economy and damage United States’ reputation from the rest of the world.

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1. IvyPanda . "September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties." June 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/september-11-2001/.

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IvyPanda . "September 11: Terror Attack and Huge Casualties." June 7, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/september-11-2001/.

Articles on 9/11 (September 11)

Displaying 1 - 20 of 156 articles.

Americans used to unite over tragic events − and now are divided by them

Thomas D. Beamish , University of California, Davis

A reflexive act of military revenge burdened the US − and may do the same for Israel

Peter Mansoor , The Ohio State University

Emergencies Act inquiry report should tackle the racist origins of national security

Reem Bahdi , University of Windsor ; Fahad Ahmad , Toronto Metropolitan University ; Jeffrey Monaghan , Carleton University , and Yasmeen Abu-Laban , University of Alberta

Is the terrorism threat over?

Greg Barton , Deakin University

Jan. 6 Committee’s fact-finding and bipartisanship will lead to an impact in coming decades, if not tomorrow

Claire Leavitt , Smith College

Who was Ayman al-Zawahri ? Where does his death leave al-Qaida and what does it say about US counterterrorism?

Haroro J. Ingram , George Washington University ; Andrew Mines , George Washington University , and Daniel Milton , United States Military Academy West Point

Your past is my present – how Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses history

Anil Menon , University of Michigan and Pauline Jones , University of Michigan

Ukraine war shows it’s time to do away with the racist ‘Clash of Civilizations’ theory

Katherine Bullock , University of Toronto

War sent America off the rails 19 years ago. Could another one bring it back?

Jason Opal , McGill University

Cabinet papers 2001: how ‘securitisation’ became a mindset to dominate Australian politics for a generation

Chris Wallace , University of Canberra

20 years after 9/11, the men charged with responsibility are still waiting for trial – here’s why

Lisa Hajjar , University of California, Santa Barbara

Afghanistan’s war rug industry distorts the reality of everyday trauma

Jamal J. Elias , University of Pennsylvania

9/11: how politicians and the media turned terrorism into an Islamic issue

Jared Ahmad , University of Sheffield

9/11 twenty years on: al-Qaida is defeated – but jihadism is here to stay

Christina Hellmich , University of Reading

9/11 inspired an outpouring of classical music – too much of it thoughtless and emotionless

Ian Pace , City, University of London

9/11 survivors’ exposure to toxic dust and the chronic health conditions that followed offer lessons that are still too often unheeded

Roberto Lucchini , Florida International University

American Muslims are at high risk of suicide – 20 years post-9 /11, the links between Islamophobia and suicide remain unexplored

Amelia Noor-Oshiro , Johns Hopkins University

9/11 did not change the world – it was already on the path to decades of conflict

Paul Rogers , University of Bradford

How 9/11 changed cinema

Maria Flood , University of Liverpool and Michael C. Frank , University of Zurich

How the terrifying evacuations from the twin towers on 9/11 helped make today’s skyscrapers safer

Erica Kuligowski , RMIT University

Related Topics

• 9/11 20th Anniversary
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• George W Bush
• Osama bin Laden
• United States
• War on terrorism
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Top contributors

Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

Professor in The Division of Global Affairs and The Department of Political Science, Rutgers University - Newark

Professor of Music, City, University of London

Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Culture, Edinburgh Napier University

Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina

Professor of History, University of Dayton

Professor of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University School of Public Affairs

Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Notre Dame Australia

Associate Professor and Director of the Terrorism Research Center, University of Arkansas

Vice-Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow, School of Engineering, RMIT University

Professor of War Studies, University of Nottingham

Professor in American Politics, The University of Melbourne

Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Seattle University

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94 September 11 Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on september 11, ✍️ september 11 essay topics for college, 🎓 most interesting september 11th research titles, 💡 simple 9-11 essay ideas, ❓ 9/11 research questions.

• “Come September”: A Perspective on September 11 Made by Arundhati Roy
• The Events of 9/11 from a Sociological Standpoint
• Airport Transportation Security After 9/11 Attacks
• Analysis of President George W. Bush’s Speech to the Nation on 9/11
• Controlling Irrational Fears After 9-11
• Tradegy September 11, 2001: Personal Experience
• Generation Kill: War on Terrorism After 9/11
• COVID-19 and 9.11 Attacks: The Impact on Aviation Both the COVID-19 and 9/11 attacks affected the global aviation industry. The US had to endure the effects, whereas the pandemic instilled global repercussions.
• Policy Considerations Post-9.11 The Post-9/11 policy shifts are reactive because all the proposed by the government changes are caused by the attack.
• Researching of 9-11 Commission The 9/11 Commission was formed in 2002 after the events of September 11, 2001 to investigate what really happened.
• September 11, 2001: Understanding the Present Through the Past Studying events of a negative nature, such as the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, helps one understand the world in which people live today and themselves.
• War on Terrorism on USA After 9/11/2001 The discussion of the acts and policies directed at the USA security are going to be considered with the purpose to follow the changes that occurred after the 9/11 attacks.
• On the Reasons for the Terrorist Attack on September 11 The purpose of this article is to investigate allegedly American offenses that may have led to the 9/11 terrorist attack.
• Individuals Targeted in 9-11 Hate Crimes and Racial Profiling Hate crimes and profiling continue to take place even in the present day. These malpractices and misbehaviors compare to the Salem witch hunts in a number of ways.
• 9/11 Attacks as a Turning Point of Contemporary History The purpose of this paper is to examine the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. in terms of their background, timeline, and aftermath.
• Bush Administration’s Response to the 9/11 Attacks It was only after the events of September 11 that the threat of terrorism became the highest priority on the agenda of the military-political leadership of the United States.
• U.S. Policy to Iraq From 9/11/2001 to U.S.-Iraq War The U.S policy had shifted sharply towards ensuring Iraq never made such weapons of mass destruction and also to ensure Saddam’s ultimate down fall.
• Recovery Efforts During 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina It is a prerequisite of any government in place to always be prepared for any disaster of whatever nature whether natural or humanly initiated.
• Important Federal Policy Changes in Response to September 11 There were two major Federal policy changes in response to the public and political backlash of September 11 and these are: Intelligence gathering, Information sharing.
• Causes of the Break Down of Intelligence Before the Terrorist Attack of 9-11 The breakdown of intelligence culminating in the September 11 attacks was largely a result of lack of preparedness, ignorance, failure to learn from the past events.
• United States Economy Following September 11th The paper examines the short- and long-term economic outcomes of the 11th September attack for the United States.
• 9/11 Commission Report’s Critical Thinking Analysis This paper will seek to implement the Elder and Paul model of critical thinking with the 8 elements of thought to the 9/11 commission report and analyze it.
• The 9/11 Attack Justification and Its Plausibility Questioning the plausibility of justifying 9/11 implies that the actions of terrorists should be explored not from a moralist perspective but from a logical perspective.
• Generation Kill: Anti-Terrorism Fight After 9/11 Terrorists unleash indiscriminate violence to create fear and, consequently, attain economic, religious, or political objectives.
• 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in Psychological Aspect The purpose of this essay is to analyze the response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, mainly from psychological perspectives.
• Legislation After the 9/11 Terrorist Attack in New York The USA Patriot Act was signed on 26th October 2001 and focused on the enhancement of law enforcement powers and intelligence-gathering procedures.
• Events of 9/11 and an Era of New Terrorism This paper discusses whether the events of 9/11 and beyond presage an era of new terrorism, and what problems does this pose in terms of risk management.
• Clinton’s and Bush’s Foreign Policy and the 9/11 Clinton and Bush positioned themselves as the bearers of democracy that had to result in peace all over the globe but led to conflicts between Jihad and McWorld.
• Did America Over Reacted to the 9/11 Attacks? Americans need to recognize that terrorism is a global menace that claims human lives and affects the economy. It must be tackled in collaboration with other countries.
• Crimes in America: The 9/11/01 Terrorist Attacks After the 9/11/01 attacks in the U.S the media was at the forefront in informing the world that the terrorist attacks had been launched in Washington, D.C, and New York City.
• 9/11 Terrorist Attacks and Its Effect on Muslims On September 11 2011, Islamic extremists crashed four airplanes into strategic locations in the USA. The present paper discusses the consequences of this historical event on Muslims.
• Looming the Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 The ordinariness of terror lies in the natural cruelty of people who are usually considered to be the closest friends though they accept the rules and laws of jihad.
• Afghanistan War: Primary Driver of the Invasion Was the September 11 Attacks on the U.S.
• How Did the Bush Administration Failed To Handle the September 11 Attack in the U.S.?
• American Muslims After September 11
• September 11, 2001, and the Global War on Terror
• Bush’s Fight Against Terrorism in Response to September 11, 2001
• What Would Hobbes and Locke Think After September 11 Terrorist Attack?
• Before and After September 11
• Terrorism, Maritime Security, and Shipping Containers After the September 11, 2001 Attacks
• Safety-first Portfolio Optimization After September 11, 2001
• US Antiterrorism Tactics After September 11, 2001
• September 11: Legal Issues and Global Campaign
• Airline Schedule Recovery After Airport Closures: Empirical Evidence Since 9/11
• The U.S. Economy After September 11
• Our Society After September 11, 2001
• The Problems Between Muslims and Christians in the United States Following the 9-11 Terrorist Attack
• Radio Talk-show’s Influence After September 11
• The United States’ Tourism Industry After the September 11 Attack
• Culture and Collective Action – Japan, Germany and the United States After 9/11 2001
• Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of 9-11 2001
• Comparing the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, to Pearl Harbor
• The U.S. Military Attack on the Terrorist Attacks on September 11th
• Correlation Between the Attack on Pearl Harbor and the Attack September 11
• September 11th, 2001 and Speculation on Prior Knowledge by the U.S
• Labor Organizations and September 11, 2001 Effects
• International Relations Theory and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11
• Arabs, Muslims, and September 11
• The First Responders During New York City on September 11
• Appetite for Destruction: The Impact of the September 11 Attacks on Business Founding
• Congress United Post September 11, 2001
• Anti-Arab Hate Crimes After September 11
• September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks and Global Reactions
• What Are the Effects of September 11 on the Muslim Population in Toronto?
• The Airline Industry Since September 11, 2001
• Racial Profiling After September 11
• September 11, 2001, the Most Frightening Day of the United
• Unjust Muslim Discrimination and Stereotypes Engraved by the Modern Society After 9-11 2001, in the United States
• Payment System Disruptions and the Federal Reserve Following September 9/11 2001
• The U.S. Patriot Act After the September 11 Attack
• Cook County, IL, and Post September 11 Infrastructure Problems
• Arab American Minority Rights After the September 11 Attacks
• Islamic Terrorism and the Attack of September 11
• The Events That Took Place on Tuesday, September 11, 2001
• What Was the Political Effect of 9/11?
• How Did 9/11/01 Affect the Way We Live in America Today?
• How 9/11 Changed the World?
• How Simon Lockhart’s Attitude Towards His Arab Friends Changed after 9/11?
• How September 11th Changed Our Lives?
• How 9/11 Affected the American Bureaucracy?
• How Do Hollywood Movies Portray Muslims and Arabs after 9/11?
• What Were the Motives of the Terrorists Who Carried Out the 9/11 Attacks on the USA?
• How 9/11 Affected the Whole Nation?
• How Leaders Controlled Events in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks in New York City?
• How the 9/11 Attacks Brought Americans Together?
• How September 11th Changed America?
• Who Will Fight? The All-Volunteer Army after 9/11?
• How September 11th Changed Our Military?
• Was President Bill Clinton Responsible for September 11th?
• How Did the September 11th Terrorist Attack Affect Caribbean Tourism?
• How Security Has Changed Since 9/11?
• Did 9/11 Worsen the Job Prospects of Hispanic Immigrants?
• How Media Has Changed Since 9/11?
• What Is the Relationship between 9/11 and the Need for Foreign Oil?

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StudyCorgi. (2022, January 28). 94 September 11 Essay Topics. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/september-11-essay-topics/

"94 September 11 Essay Topics." StudyCorgi , 28 Jan. 2022, studycorgi.com/ideas/september-11-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . (2022) '94 September 11 Essay Topics'. 28 January.

1. StudyCorgi . "94 September 11 Essay Topics." January 28, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/september-11-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "94 September 11 Essay Topics." January 28, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/september-11-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . 2022. "94 September 11 Essay Topics." January 28, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/september-11-essay-topics/.

These essay examples and topics on September 11 were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on June 24, 2024 .

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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Long-term memory for the terrorist attack of September 11: Flashbulb memories, event memories, and the factors that influence their retention

More than 3,000 individuals from seven US cities reported on their memories of learning of the terrorist attacks of September 11, as well as details about the attack, one week, 11 months, and/or 35 months after the assault. Some studies of flashbulb memories examining long-term retention show slowing in the rate of forgetting after a year, whereas others demonstrate accelerated forgetting. The present paper indicates that (1) the rate of forgetting for flashbulb memories and event memory (memory for details about the event itself) slows after a year, (2) the strong emotional reactions elicited by flashbulb events are remembered poorly, worse than non-emotional features such as where and from whom one learned of the attack, and (3) the content of flashbulb and event memories stabilizes after a year. The results are discussed in terms of community memory practices.

Brown and Kulik (1977) suggested the term flashbulb memory for the “circumstances in which one first learned of a very surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event,” for example, hearing the news that President John Kennedy had been shot. Since Brown and Kulik's description of their findings, the range of topics addressed in studies of flashbulb memories has grown substantially, from initial questions about special mechanisms ( McCloskey, Wible, & Cohen, 1988 ; Neisser & Harsh, 1992 ) to more recent questions about the impact of aging and dementia ( Budson, Simons, Sullivan, Beier, Solomon, Scinto, et al., 2004 ; Budson, Simons, Waring, Sullivan, Hussoin, & Schacter, 2007 ; Davidson, Cook, & Glisky, 2005), the history of post-traumatic stress disorder ( Qin, Mitchell, Johnson, Krystal, Southwick et all, 2003 ), as well as the role of social identity [e.g., as seen in the presence or absence, respectively, of flashbulb memories of French citizens and French-speaking Belgians of the death of French President Mitterraand ( Curci, Luminet, Finkenauer, & Gisle, 2001 ; see also Berntsen, 2008 ; Hirst & Meksin, 2008 )]. Researchers have also begun to investigate memories for the flashbulb event itself ( Curci & Luminet, 2006 ; Luminet, Curci, Marsh, Wessel, Constantin, Genocoz, et al., 2004 ; Pezdak, 2003 ; Shapiro, 2006 ; Tekcan, Berium, Gülgöz, & Er, 2003 ). In this literature, the term flashbulb memory refers to memory for circumstances in which one learned of the event and would include memories of where, when, and from whom one learned of, for instance, the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. The term event memory refers to memory for facts about the flashbulb event and would include, for instance, that four planes were involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack and that both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were targets. 1

Flashbulb memories and their associated event memories are often considered special because they involve events that are not ordinary or everyday, and usually are not personally experienced, but rather, they are public and emotionally charged ( Neisser, 1982 ). It is the public nature of flashbulb memories and their associated event memories that ensures the memories strongly influence both individual and collective identity ( Berntsen, 2008 ; Hirst & Meksin, 2008 ; Neisser, 1982 ). Their role in shaping identity depends, of course, on their being retained ( Bruner, 1990 ; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000 ). Surprisingly, whereas much is known about how well flashbulb and event memories are retained over a period of approximately a year, much less is known about their long-term retention. This relative neglect applies not just to the issue of the amount retained, but also to differences in the kind of information that is retained over the long-term and the factors that might affect the level and content of long-term retention. For instance, whereas many researchers have emphasized that flashbulb events inevitably elicit strong emotions from individuals, few researchers have contrasted the long-term retention of memories of these emotional reactions with the long-term retention of memories of other features of flashbulb memories, for example, who you were with when learning of the event, where you were, or how you were informed (see, however, Levine, Safer, & Lench, 2006 ). Moreover, although a number of psychological studies have related the level of retention to individual cognitive factors (e.g., rehearsal), none have discussed the contribution of memory practices, that is, the way a society goes about ensuring that a public event will never be forgotten by the public ( Hirst & Manier, 2008 ; Olick & Robbins, 1998 ; but see Hoskins, 2007 ). Memory practices may play a role in the retention of flashbulb and event memories given the public nature of the reference event.

The present paper, then, focuses on four issues: (1) the long-term retention of flashbulb and event memories, (2) the comparative retention of emotional reactions with the retention of other features of a flashbulb event, (3) possible difference in the underlying processing associated with the formation and retention of flashbulb and event memories, and (4) the factors that shape long-term retention, including the role of memory practices. It explores these issues in the context of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.

Consider the issue of long-term retention. From the extant research, it is not clear whether forgetting for flashbulb and event memories slows or accelerates after the first year. Three studies suggest that the rate of forgetting of flashbulb memories slows dramatically after the first year. Two of these studies based their conclusions on the vividness or accuracy of flashbulb memories. Kvavilashvili, Mirani, Schlagman, and Kornbrot (2003) found that British citizens reported vivid, confidently held memories of the circumstances under which they learned of the death of Princess Diana, even after a delay of 51 months. Berntsen and Thomsen (2005) discovered that elderly Danes accurately remembered the weather on the day of the German W.W. II invasion of and withdrawal from Denmark.

Neither of these studies, however, employed a test-retest methodology, in which memories are assessed shortly after the flashbulb event and then after a significant retention interval. This methodology supplies a putatively reliable memory with which to compare the consistency of later recollections and is consequently the preferred means of studying flashbulb memories (see, however, Winningham, Hyman, & Dinnel, 2000 ). Kvavilashvili et al. did not have an initial assessment for a test-retest. Berntsen and Thomsen had verifiable information about the original event, but their documentary methodology does not permit as wide a ranging examination of mnemonic attributes as the test-retest method does. Relying on public records such as weather reports largely precludes exploring those attributes Brown and Kulik (1977) identified as the canonical features of flashbulb memories, for example, who the respondent was with, how the respondent reacted emotionally, or who the informant was. Bohannon and Symons (1992 ; see also Bohannon, 1988 ) conducted the third study, finding a slowing in forgetting, and did employ a test-retest methodology in their investigation of the Challenger explosion, but, in the end, based their conclusions about the rate of forgetting on cross-sectional data.

Two studies did ground their conclusions about long-term retention on the results of test-retests. Unfortunately, Neisser and Harsh (1992) employed only one retest in their study of the Challenger explosion, making any analysis of the rate of forgetting difficult. On the other hand, Schmolck, Buffalo, and Squire (2000) used two retests in their study of the announcement of the verdict in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. They found that at 15 months, a little less than 40% of the flashbulb memories they examined contained no distortions, and only about 10% contained major distortions. At 32 months, the pattern was reversed: Only about 20% contained no distortions and over 40% of the memories contained major distortions. These results strongly support the claim that the rate of forgetting increases, rather than slows, over time.

Because of the controversy over the rate of forgetting of flashbulb memories, it is difficult to evaluate Talarico and Rubin's (2003) claim that, despite a flashbulb event's public and emotionally charged nature, the rate of forgetting of flashbulb memories is the same as the rate of forgetting of ordinary autobiographical memories. Talarico and Rubin suggested that flashbulb memories and ordinary autobiographical memories differ not in their rate of forgetting, but in the confidence with which they are held, with confidence in flashbulb memories remaining high, even as the memories are forgotten. Confidence in ordinary autobiographical memories declines as the memories are forgotten (see also Weaver, 1993 ). Talarico and Rubin, however, only tested retention intervals of eight months or less. Schmolck et al. (2002)'s findings indicated that flashbulb memories may be an exception to the pattern of forgetting observed for ordinary, autobiographical memories when long-term retention intervals are considered.

Talarico and Rubin (2003) compared their participants' memory for their reception event for 9/11 with a self-selected autobiographical memory – a memory of an “everyday” event from the three days before September 11. A perhaps more general point of comparison would be the forgetting curves obtained in diary studies ( Rubin, 2005 ). These studies involve the assessment of a wide-range of types of memories over a substantial period. The forgetting curves collected across studies are remarkably similar, showing rapid forgetting in the first year and then slowing. As a result, they indicate that autobiographical memories may follow the well-established pattern of forgetting documented since Ebbinghaus (1913/1964) . Linton (1986) , for instance, showed dramatic forgetting over the first year and then a much slower rate of forgetting of 6% for the next five years. Similarly, Wagenaar (1986) found a substantial decline of 20% in the first year for critical details and then a slower decline of approximately 10% for the next four years. If Talarico and Rubin's findings of equivalent forgetting of flashbulb and ordinary memories up to eight months extends to longer retention intervals, then the diary studies would suggest that the results of Schmolck et al. (2000) are an anomaly, and those of Bohannon and Symons (1992) , Kvavilashvili et al. (2003) , and Berntsen and Thomsen (2005) may be more typical.

In the present study, we asked whether the accelerated forgetting Schmolck et al. (2000) observed for the Simpson verdict between the first and third years applies as well to flashbulb memories for the terrorist attack of 9/11. Consequently, we assessed our participant's memory for 9/11 one week, 11 months and 35 months after the terrorist attack. We choose the 11 months and 35 months retention intervals because they were in the same time frame used by Schmolck et al., but minimized potential effects of anniversary commemorations.

In addition, we also examined the retention of associated event memories at one week, 11 months, and 35 months after the terrorist attack. The scant relevant literature on event memory is as inconclusive about long-term retention as the literature on flashbulb memories. Bahrick and his colleagues ( Bahrick, 1983 , 1984 ; Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975 ) have shown that neutral facts, such as the names of fellow college students, college streets, or college-learned Spanish vocabulary, are steadily forgotten for six years, and then, if still retained, preserved for decades to come. Along the same lines, Belli, Schuman, and Jackson (1997) found good retention after decades for newsworthy events such as the Tet Offensive, at least for participants for whom the event “defined” their generation. Neither of these studies examined whether respondents remembered the circumstances in which they learned of the event, making their relevance to the topic of flashbulb memories at best speculative. The flashbulb memory studies that also explored event memory indicate that for retention intervals of a year or less, event memories are subject to a steady decline (Finkenhauer, Luminet, Gisle, & Filipopot, 1998; Smith, Bibi, & Sheard, 2003 ; Tekcan et al., 2003 ). In the only study that examined event memory at longer retention intervals, Bohannon and Symons (1992) found that event memories declined a substantial 20% between the 15-month and 36-month intervals, suggesting that, while the rate of forgetting may not accelerate, it clearly does not slow after a year.

Finally, as noted earlier, we also investigated whether long-term retention for emotional reactions to 9/11 differs from memory for other features of flashbulb memories, as well as what factors shape long-term retention of different features. There is almost no research comparing memory for emotional reactions with memory for other features of flashbulb memory (but see Qin et al., 2003 ). Levine and colleagues explored memory for emotional reactions to flashbulb events, but used relatively short retention intervals and did not make comparisons with other features, as we do here ( Levine, Prohaska, Burgess, Rice, & Laulhere, 2001 ; Levine, Whalen, Henker, & Jamner, 2005 ).

As for the factors that might affect retention, we explore whether any similarity in the patterns of forgetting of flashbulb memories and event memories implies that the processes that underlie the retention (and forgetting) of these two types of memories are the same. Some research on flashbulb memories and event memories would suggest that the underlying processes are similar. For instance, through their modeling of the formation and maintenance of flashbulb memories, Luminet, Curci, and their colleagues have argued that some factors involved in the formation of event memories overlap with those involved in the formation of flashbulb memories (e.g., rehearsal, see Luminet, 2008 , for a review). Their model also documented differences in factors uniquely involved in the formation of flashbulb memories, specifically, surprise and novelty. Testing the complex models developed by this group goes beyond a chief aim of the present paper – to explore long-term retention of flashbulb memories and event memories. Nevertheless, we investigated some factors that could putatively predict levels of forgetting. We also examined the way the content of the memories changes over time, on the assumption that if the predictors or content changes differ for flashbulb and event memories, then different processes may be involved.

We are not only interested in intrapsychic factors. We also present analyses in the General Discussion that suggest provide evidence that different retention curves reported in the literature can be attributed to different social memory practices.

Participants, recruitment, and procedure

Participants were recruited in Boston and Cambridge, MA; New Haven, CT; New York, NY; Washington, DC; St. Louis, MO; Palo Alto, CA; and Santa Cruz, CA. For Survey 1 (one week after the attack), tables were set up either on the campuses of the collaborators or in surrounding neighborhoods. Lab members also asked friends and acquaintances if they would be interested. In the survey, we asked if participants were willing to be contacted in a year for a second survey. All respondents indicated their willingness. Surveys and stamped return envelopes were given to all participants.

For Survey 2, we contacted respondents to the first survey through e-mail, the postal system, or both, and asked them if they wished to participate in the second survey. We also recruited additional participants, in the same ways, for both the second survey and a third survey, to examine possible effect of prior participation. For Survey 3, we recruited all participants who responded to Survey 1 and/or Survey 2 and added another group of new participants.

For all three surveys, participants were told that they had one week to fill out the survey and return it to the experimenters. There was both a paper version and a web-based version for Surveys 2 and 3. Participants recruited through the postal system received a survey, but were told they could use the web-based version if they wished. Those who were recruited through e-mail were told that they could fill out the web-based version or receive a paper version either through e-mail (as a pdf file) or in the post. We recruited participants between September 17, 2001 and September 21, 2001 for Survey 1; August 5 and August 26, 2002 for Survey 2; and August 9 and August 20, 2004 for Survey 3. We closed the website two weeks after the last day of recruitment and stopped accepting returned postal surveys five days later.

Table 1 shows the number of participants from each of the six recruitment locations. 38% of the respondents to Survey 1 completed Survey 2, while 18% of the respondents on Survey 1 completed both Surveys 2 and 3. For Surveys 2 and 3, 27% responded through e-mail. These return rates are comparable to other surveys without a monetary incentive or a follow-up query ( Baruch, 1999 ). We compared the responses to each question on the survey, one question at a time, and found no significant differences in the responses of the web-based and postal responses (in all cases, p > .4), thus we merged the data from the two formats. To make the exposition in this paper straightforward, we will confine most of our analysis to the 391 participants who filled out all three surveys.

Distribution of samples in which a participant responded on one or more than one survey

Notes. Boston (Bos), New Haven (NH), New York City (NYC), Washington, DC (DC), St. Louis (STL), Palo Alto (Palo), Santa Cruz (SC).

Separate surveys were designed for each testing period, with Survey 1 serving as the model for the other two. The surveys were approximately 17 pages and took about 45 minutes to complete. Copies of the surveys can be found at http://911memory.nyu.edu .

All surveys began with a general statement of the aims of the project, a consent form, and a request for an identification code that would allow the experimenters to track questionnaires across the three survey periods. Table 2 summarizes the probes on the questionnaire in Survey 1 that figured in our present analyses. Questions 1 – 6 were relevant to establishing the consistency of flashbulb memories; Questions 7 – 11, the accuracy of event memories, and Questions 12 – 23 dealt with predictors, specifically, consequentiality (as assessed by personal loss or inconvenience), the intensity of the emotional response, and rehearsal (as assessed by attention to media and conversations). We did not attempt to cover the entire range of predictors found in the literature. In some cases, such as surprise and novelty, we expected uniformly high scores, making such data insensitive as a potential predictor. In other cases, such as prior knowledge, we were uncertain what to ask as we prepared the survey a few days after the attack (e.g., while we were constructing the survey, there were still questions about who carried out the attacks). Survey 2 followed a similar format to Survey 1, except that two versions were constructed and distributed such that participants were asked, in equal numbers, for the flashbulb memory questions either: (a) How confident are you that your recollection is accurate (different questions assessed time, source, place, etc.), or (b) How accurately do you think that you will remember two years from now? Participants responded on a 1 – 5 scale, with 5 being the highest rating. Survey 3 was similar to Survey 2, although the time frame for the forecasting questions was changed from two years to seven years. Eight demographic questions concluded the surveys, probing, among other things, for residency.

Relevant questions in Survey 1

A coding manual for Survey 1 was developed after reading through 50 surveys to determine the range and nature of the responses. It was written to be a stand-alone document that would provide complete and independent guidance to a coder. Table 3 contains examples of the coding scheme. If 50 similar responses were coded as “other,” then the coding scheme was revised and this “new” option was added. The coding was then redone for this question. Such recoding was done for 14% of the questions. The coding manuals can also be found on http://911memory.nyu.edu .

Examples of coding schemes

To assess interrater reliability of the coding, at the end of the coding process for each survey, we randomly selected 10% of the surveys to be dual-coded. We then calculated for each question either kappas or Cronbach alphas (whichever was appropriate) for each question. Reliability ratings were good for both the short-answer questions and open-ended questions, in that they all exceeded .80.

General Considerations

As Luminet, Curci, Marsh, Wessel, Constantin, Gencoz, et al. (2004) noted, a large sample and numerous comparisons can produce misleading significant differences. Following their guidelines, we set a significance level of .01. Moreover, we report Cohen's d ( Cohen, 1992 ), for which .20 is indicative of a small effect size, .50 a medium effect size, and .80 a large effect size.

We began by comparing the rate of forgetting a year after the September 11 attack with the rate of forgetting after three years.

Coding considerations

We devised separate coding schemes for flashbulb memories and event memories. Our coding scheme for measuring the consistency of flashbulb memories differed from the one employed in Neisser and Harsch (1992) . We developed this new procedure because we wanted not simply to determine whether responses were consistent over time, but also how they varied in content from one survey to the next. In our measure of consistency of flashbulb memories, we matched the coding for Survey 1 with the coding of the other two surveys, producing consistency measures that contrasted Survey 2 with Survey 1 (S12) or Survey 3 with Survey 1 (S13). Two responses were consistent if they were coded in the same manner, with a “1” assigned if the items were consistent and a “0” if they were inconsistent. As Table 2 indicates, we focused on six of the canonical features of Brown and Kulik (1977) . The six consistency scores were averaged to form an overall measure of consistency, ranging from 0 to 1.

The Neisser-Harsch coding scheme allowed for graded scoring, whereas our scheme did not. That is, in Neisser and Harsch (1992) , a “correct response” could have received a score of “2” or “1,” with “0” reserved for clearly incorrect responses. Our measure was dichotomous. If a participant had originally wrote “I was listening to the TV as I got dressed” and later remembered “I was watching TV,” Neisser and Harsch would have scored it a “1” out of a possible two. We would have scored it a “1” out of a possible one (see Table 2 ). Consequently, when the various scores are summed over canonical features, the relative ranking of two participants might differ according to the Neisser-Harcsh and our coding schemes. In order to explore the relation between these two scoring procedures, we asked two coders to follow the Neisser-Harsch scheme for 50 participants' responses to the three surveys. The coders evidenced a high degree of interrater reliability, kappa = .81. The correlations between our overall consistency scores and the consistency score based on the Neisser and Harsch scheme were significant (S12: r = .29, p < .05; S13: r = .38, p < .01). Although these significant correlations are not large, they suggest that the pattern of results we observed would also have been found if we had followed the procedure specified by Neisser and Harsch. In order to assess this claim, we redid the analyses presented below in the section on “forgetting and flashbulb memories” using the scores derived from the Neisser-Harsch coding scheme. We found the same pattern of results as the one reported in this section for the Neisser-Harsch coding (in all cases, p < .05).

As for our coding scheme for event memory, we compared the answers to our probes about the event itself with the correct answers, as determined by news accounts. As Table 2 indicates, we probed for five different sets of facts: (1) number of planes, (2) name of airlines, (3) location of attacks, (4) location of President Bush, and (5) order of major events. With respect to the questions about the number of planes and about where President Bush was at the time, if respondents were correct, they received a score of 1. Otherwise, they received a 0. For the question about the identity of the airlines, each correctly identified of the two involved airline carriers received a score of .5. Furthermore, for each incorrectly mentioned airline carrier, we subtracted .25 from the total score, with a maximum penalty of .5. To keep the range of scoring between 0 and 1, we changed any negative score to a zero. We scored (9) in a similar manner, but since there were three crash sites, each correct response received a score of .33 and incorrect answers were penalized at a rate of .16. For (11), we had listed six possible events for the respondent to order (see Table 2 ). We calculated the Spearman Rank correlation between the respondent's order and the actual order. A negative correlation was recorded as 0. The total accuracy score was the average score across the five probes. Here and elsewhere, we use the term accuracy when discussing event memory; consistency when considering flashbulb memories.

Forgetting and flashbulb memories

We were chiefly interested in determining whether the rate of forgetting increased or slowed over the long term, specifically, between Survey 1 and Survey 3. As Table 4 reveals, 11 months after the attack (when Survey 2 was administered), participants offered consistent answers about their flashbulb memories only 63% of the time, on average. The decay over the next two years (when Survey 3 was administered) was much smaller, with a proportional decline of 9%, or an average of 4.5% a year. Although the difference between the consistency between Surveys 1 and 2 and the consistency between Surveys 1 and 3 was significant, t (390) = 5.21, p < .01, the effect size is small ( d = .28), providing further support that the rate of forgetting had slowed after the first year.

Consistency and Confidence Ratings

In order to contrast memory for emotional reactions on hearing the news about 9/11 with other features of flashbulb memories, we separately tabulated the consistency of responses across the three surveys to an open-ended question about the emotional reaction of the respondent upon hearing the news ( Table 2 , Question 4). For both Surveys 2 and 3, the overall measure of consistency was significantly greater than the measure of consistency associated with the open-ended probe of emotion: for S12, t (375) = 8.72, d = .56, p < .01, for S13, t (364) = 9.17, d = .53, p < .01 (see Table 4 ).

Participants' relatively poor recollections of their emotional state can also be detected in their responses to the six questions that specifically asked them to rate the intensity with which they felt sadness, anger, fear, confusion, frustration, and shock ( Table 2 , Questions 14 –20). We were not interested in participants' recollection of the specific rating score they gave: This would require them to remember both the level of their intensity and the scale they used to express this intensity across surveys. Rather we were interested in their memory of the relation among different emotions, for example, whether, after 9/11, they felt more sadness than shock. To explore these relations, we translated the emotional ratings an individual participant gave into z-scores, calculated separately for each survey and each participant. We calculated Pearson Product-Moment correlations between a participant's z-scores on Survey 1 and Survey 2 and between a participant's scores on Survey 1 and Survey 3. Table 4 contains the average correlation for these two calculations. The correlation between Survey 1 and Survey 3 was significantly less than between Survey 1 and Survey 2, t (390) = 2.90, p < .05, but the effect size was small, d = .15, indicating that most of participants' forgetting of their emotional responses happened between Survey 1 and Survey 2. For an individual respondent, the correlation would need to be greater than .73 to be significant at the .05 level. Only 31.3% of the respondents had a correlation greater than .73 between Surveys 1 and 2 and only 25.3% between Surveys 1 and 3.

Finally, although the flashbulb memories were not consistent across surveys, confidence ratings were high (see Table 4 ). As noted, this pattern of inconsistent memories accompanied by high confidence rating suggests that a trademark of flashbulb memories extends across long-term retention periods ( Talarico & Rubin, 2003 ). The decline in confidence between Survey 2 and Survey 3 was not significant ( p > .30).

The pattern of results we found did not arise because we repeatedly tested our participants. In order to determine whether the small decline in overall consistency we observed between Survey 2 and Survey 3 could be attributed to an effect of filling out Survey 2, we compared the overall consistency scores for the sample that filled out only Surveys 1 and 2 ( M = .63; SD = .20) with overall consistency scores for the sample that filled out only Surveys 1 and 3 ( M = .55; SD = .23). The difference between these two consistency scores represented a significant decline, t (458) = 3.44, p < .01, again with only a medium effect size, d = .32. In order to explore further the effect of multiple surveys, we also compared the overall consistency scores on Survey 3 of the three-surveys sample with (1) the overall consistency scores for participants who only filled out Surveys 1 and 3 and (2) the overall consistency scores for participants who only filled out Surveys 2 and 3 (with Survey 2 now serving as the baseline). These two comparisons were not significant ( p s > .40). In addition, there were no significant differences between the various samples in terms of age, religion, residency, political viewpoint, gender, or race/ethnicity ( p s > .30). In other words, the large decline we observed between Surveys 1 and 2 and the smaller decline that occurred between Surveys 2 and 3 is probably not a result of our retesting procedure.

Forgetting and event memory

Similar to the consistency measure for flashbulb memories, the overall measure of event memory accuracy showed a pattern of slowing in the rate of forgetting for facts about 9/11 between the first and third year (see Table 5 ). Examining the overall measure of accuracy, an ANOVA revealed a main effect for survey, F (1, 390) = 88.5, p < .001, η p 2 = .19. The drop in accuracy from Survey 1 to Survey 2 was significant, with a decline of 13% and a medium effect size, t (390) = 11.81, p < .001, d = .61. We did not find a significant decline in accuracy from Survey 2 to Survey 3, t (390) = .77, p = .45.

Facts accurately remembered: Means of the Accuracy Scores and Standard Deviations (in parentheses)

Notes. Data was either nominal or interval. Nominal data is reported as frequencies, interval data as proportions. The proportions are reported with standard deviations.

A closer examination of the responses to each probe revealed a more complicated story than suggested by overall accuracy scores. As Table 5 indicates, the pattern of forgetting depended on the information being sought. There was no significant difference between the accuracy on Surveys 1 and 2 for two probes: the crash sites and the order of the events ( p s > .50). For the number of the planes, there was only a significant decline from Survey 1 to Survey 2, using a McNemar test, χ 2 (1) = 14.75, p < .001.

The names of the airline carriers showed a continuous decline across surveys and large effect sizes: Survey 1 vs. Survey 2, t (390) = 7.72, p < .001, d = .50; Survey 2 vs. Survey 3, t (390) = 6.21, p < .001, d = .30. We account for this result in the General Discussion section. As for the probes about the location of President Bush at the time of the attack, again, using a McNemar test, there was a significant decline from Survey 1 to Survey 2, χ 2 (1) = 95.43, p < .001, as well as a significant improvement from Survey 2 to Survey 3, χ 2 (1) = 68.81, p < .001. We attribute the increase in accuracy about the location of President Bush from Survey 2 to Survey 3 to what we call the Michael Moore Effect (also see Greenberg, 2004 ). Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 911 brought dramatic attention to President Bush's location by featuring his reading of The Pet Goat in a Florida elementary school. Table 5 contrasts the frequency of correct responses for the question about President Bush's location for those who reported that they did or did not see the Moore film. There was no significant difference between those who did or did not watch the Moore film on Surveys 1 and 2, but a significant difference emerged on Survey 3, χ 2 (1) = 24.41, p < .001. In other words, there was a marked overall improvement between Surveys 2 and 3, with those who saw the movie showing a greater improvement for Survey 3 (52%) than those who had not (32%). The improvement of those who did not see the Moore film may reflect the extensive discussion in the media the Moore film generated about the six-minute segment of President Bush's Pet Goat reading. The even more dramatic improvement of the Moore movie watchers may have been because of the film itself.

The only significant correlation between overall consistency and overall accuracy was between the overall consistency measure between Surveys 1 and 3 and the overall accuracy measure on Survey 3, r = .10, p < .05.

In sum, the present results suggest that the rate of forgetting slows between the first and third years for both flashbulb memories and event memories. This result suggests that the Schmolck et al. (2000) results may be an anomaly rather than a characteristic portrait of the pattern of forgetting of flashbulb memories over the long-term. Moreover, the lower emotion consistency than overall consistency scores suggest that people may forget their emotional reactions to hearing the news of the attack more quickly than other aspects of flashbulb memories, such as, where they were, who told them, and how they were told.

Are there different processes underlying the similar patterns of forgetting for flashbulb memories and event memories?

Even though we found similar patterns of forgetting for both flashbulb memories and event memories, this does not mean that the same factors are affecting remembering and forgetting in the two cases. We address this issue by examining whether the same factors predict consistency and accuracy and whether the pattern of types of changes in content over the long-term are the same for flashbulb memories and event memories. If differences in predictors and content changes can be found between flashbulb memories and event memories, then different processes probably underlie the retention (and forgetting) of these two memory types.

Predictors of consistency and accuracy

We focused on five putative predictors: two probes of consequentiality—residency and the combination of personal loss and inconvenience – as well as emotionality, media attention, and ensuing conversation. We also examined the location in which a participant learned of the attack as a predictor, but it had no affect on our measures of consistency, confidence, or accuracy, and is not discussed further. As to residency, we divided our sample into New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers. Respondents who resided outside the city borders were classified as non-New Yorkers. We explored whether participants who lived in downtown Manhattan (near Ground Zero) differed from other participants, inasmuch as other researchers have found differences between the downtown population and the larger population (Galea & Vlahov, 2004; Sharot, Martorella, Delgado, & Phelps, 2007 ). We failed to find any differences on our measures of consistency, accuracy, or confidence using this distinction ( p s > .20).

In assessing the effect of personal loss and/or inconvenience ( Table 2 , Questions 12 and 13), we counted concrete answers such as damage of home, loss of business, personal injury to self, friend, or relative, cancellation of school, and/or lack of food. 2 We did not include psychological distress as a form of loss or inconvenience (e.g., felt anxious, lost appetite), although good arguments could be made to do so. This classification scheme should not adversely skew our results. If anything, it should decrease the likelihood of finding differences that might arise because of “personal loss or inconvenience,” inasmuch as it excludes from the “loss” sample participants who reported suffering psychological distress. An individual was said to “experience personal loss or inconvenience” if they stated one “concrete” example. According to this criterion, 40.4% of the respondents who completed all three surveys experienced personal loss or inconvenience.

In assessing emotional intensity, the surveys asked participants to rate the intensity of their emotions on a 1 – 5 scale, with 5 being most intense (see Table 2 , Questions 14–20). Inasmuch as we were mainly interested in the effects of participants' initial emotional reaction, we focused our attention on the responses recorded on Survey 1, deriving two measures of overall intensity from Survey 1's six emotional probes: (1) the average of the six emotions we probed for and (2) the highest rating given to the six emotions. These two measures were significantly correlated ( r = .70, p < .001). Both scores yielded enough variability to permit further analysis.

Questions (21) and (22) in Table 2 probed for what might be treated as effects of rehearsal, in particular, the level of media attention and the degree of ensuing conversation. In addition, on Survey 1, we asked respondents to indicate how they spent their days following the attack, assigning a percentage to a list of activities (see Table 2 , Question 23). We summed the percentages assigned to activities (a), (c), (d), and (e) to obtain a measure of attention to the media. The percentage associated with (b) reflected the level of ensuing conversation. The correlations between these percentage scores and the 1–5 rating of media attention and ensuing conversation were significant, respectively, r = .29, p < .005, and r = .33, p < .005. We use the Likert-scale ratings of media attention and ensuing conversation in our analyses.

We found a clear difference in the extent to which our five putative predictors correlated with the level of consistency of flashbulb memories and with the degree of accuracy of event memories. None of the five putative predictors appeared to be related to the consistency of flashbulb memories, in either Survey 2 or Survey 3 (see Tables 6 and ​ and7). 7 ). We did find a suggestion that the consistency ratings of non-New Yorkers were actually greater than those of New Yorkers, t (298) = 2.00, p < .05, d = .24, a difference also found in Pezdek (2003) . Inasmuch as our difference did not achieve the .01 level of significance, we remain cautious in interpreting this counterintuitive trend. As far as emotionality is concerned, we failed to find any correlations between consistency and emotionality when separately calculating correlations for each of the six emotions probed for in the surveys.

Mean consistency, confidence ratings, and accuracy as a function of residence and personal loss or inconvenience

Correlations between measures of emotion, media attention, ensuing conversation, and measures of consistency, confidence, and accuracy.

On the other hand, four of the five factors were related to the accuracy of event memory: residency, personal loss/inconvenience, ensuing conversation, and media attention. A three-way ANOVA on the three dichotomous factors – with survey, residency, and personal loss/inconvenience as the dependent variables and overall accuracy as the independent variable—revealed main effects for residency, F (1, 296) = 4.39, p < .05, η p 2 = .15, and survey, F (1, 296) = 38.54, p < .001, η p 2 = .12, , as well as a two-way interaction between personal loss/inconvenience and residency, F (1, 296) = 7.22, p < .01, η p 2 = .15, and a three-way interaction between survey, residence, and personal loss/inconvenience, F (1, 296) = 4.89, p < .05, η p 2 = .02 (see Table 6 ). As in Pezdek (2003) , the main effect for residency indicates that New Yorkers' event memory was more accurate than that of non-New Yorkers. The three-way interaction could be attributed to the failure to find any significant differences for Survey 1 ( p > .20). The two-way interaction between personal loss/inconvenience and residency can be traced to the significant differences between those with or without personal loss/inconvenience that emerged for the non-New Yorker sample on Survey 2, t (193) = 3.51, p < .001, d = .66, and on Survey 3, t (193) = 2.65, p < .01, d = .44, a difference that did not appear in the New Yorker sample on either survey ( ps > .20).

The relation between media attention and ensuing conversation, on the one hand, and accuracy, on the other, is revealed through correlational analyses (see Table 7 ). Accuracy on Survey 1 was significantly correlated with media attention and ensuing conversation in the first two weeks, but not with media attention and ensuing conversation over the 11 months or three years that followed. Accuracy on Survey 2 was correlated with initial attention to the media and initial conversations, but also the media attention and ensuing conversation over the next 11 months. Accuracy on Survey 3 was correlated with media attention and ensuing conversation in the first few days and over the 35-month period, as well as with ensuing conversation over the first 11-months.

We explored whether media attention and ensuing conversation served as mediators of our observed relation between memory accuracy and residency on the one hand, and personal loss/inconvenience on the other. We devised a measure of the cumulative level of media attention and ensuing conversation for the period of time covered by a particular survey by calculating the average of the ratings given on that survey and any previous surveys. For instance, to calculate the level of media attention relevant to Survey 3, we averaged over the rating of media attention provided in Surveys 1, 2, and 3. (For clarity's sake, media attention will refer to the rating participants gave to the question about how much they attended to the media on a particular survey. Level of media attention will refer to the averaged measure.)

Table 8 contains the levels of media attention and ensuing conversation after two weeks, 11 months, and 35 months. New-Yorkers and non-New Yorkers and those with or without a personal loss or inconvenience attended to the media equally; that is, we found no significant main effects or interactions for level of media attention ( p s > .30). This result suggests that media attention may not be a mediating factor for residency and personal loss/inconvenience. We did, however, find differences for the level of ensuing conversation. In a three-way ANOVA between survey, residency and personal loss/inconvenience, there was a main effect for survey, F (1, 285) = 265.34, p < .01, η p 2 = .48, and a significant interaction between residency and personal loss/inconvenience, F (2, 285) = 3.77, p < .05, η p 2 = .04. Non-New Yorkers with a personal loss or inconvenience talked significantly more about the attack than non-New Yorkers without a personal loss or inconvenience, for all three time periods (2 weeks: t (192) = 1.97, p < .05, d = .28; 11 months: t (183) = 2.71, p < .01, d = .40; 35 months: t (183) = 2.92, p < .03, d = .43). On the other hand, there was no significant difference in the conversations of those New Yorkers with or without a personal loss or inconvenience ( p > .50). These results nicely reflect the pattern of results we found for the effects of personal loss/inconvenience and residency on accuracy.

Average level of media attention and ensuing conversations for New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers with or without personal loss or inconvenience (PL/IN)

To determine whether the level of ensuing conversation does indeed mediate the effects of residency and personal loss/inconvenience on accuracy, we conducted three mediational analyses on the non-New Yorkers' data ( Baron &Kenny, 1986 ). The independent variable was personal loss or inconvenience (for non-New Yorkers), the dependent variable was accuracy, and the mediational variable was the level of ensuing conversation. We focused on the non New-Yorkers because that is where the level of ensuing conversation differed as a function of personal loss/inconvenience (see Figure 1 ). For the initial two-week period, the level of ensuing conversation failed to predict accuracy. Personal loss/inconvenience of non-New Yorkers also did not predict accuracy. Thus, basic assumptions underlying the mediational analysis were violated. According to Baron and Kenny, partial mediation is suggested if the regression coefficient associated with the path from personal loss to event memory decreases when the mediating variable is included in the regression. By this standard, we found evidence for partial mediation for the 11-months and 35-months periods. As indicated by the Sobel (1982) test, at 11 months and 35 months, the mediator of level of ensuing conversation carried the influence of personal loss to event memory (11 months: test statistic = 2.01. p < .05; 35 months: test statistic = 2.04, p < .05). These analyses suggest that what mattered was not particularly where participants lived at the time of the attack or what personal loss/inconvenience they experienced, but how much they talked about the event.

A four step process with (1) regression coefficient from analysis with level of ensuing conversation as the dependent variable and personal loss as predictor, (2) regression coefficient from analysis with event memory as the dependent variable and level of ensuing conversation as the predictor, (3) regression coefficient from analysis with event memory as the dependent variable and personal loss as the predictor, and (4) regression coefficients from analysis with event memory as the dependent variable and both level of ensuing conversation and personal loss/inconvenience as predictors. These latter coefficients are in parentheses. Analysis for the 11-month period is in regular type. Analysis for 35-month period is in bold type. Partial mediation occurs if the regression coefficient for personal loss associated calculated in Step 4 is less than the related coefficient calculated in Step 3.

In addition to consistency and accuracy, another important variable in studies of flashbulb memories is confidence. Although our five putative predictors did not have an effect on consistency, both media attention and ensuing conversation affected the level of confidence with which participants held their flashbulb memories (see Table 6 and especially Table 7 ). For Survey 2, how much respondents attended to the media and talked about the attack in the first 11 months was significantly correlated with level of confidence. As for their confidence after 3 years, what mattered was how much respondents attended to the media and talked about the attack over the three years, not just in the first few days or the first year.

Changes in the content of memories over time

The analyses of putative predictors suggest that the similar patterns in the rate of forgetting we found for flashbulb and event memories involve different underlying processes. We can further buttress this claim by examining the changes in the content of memories over time: Different pattern of changes for flashbulb and event memories would suggest that different underlying processes are involved in their retention (and forgetting). First, consider those flashbulb memories that were consistent and those event memories that were accurate. Did, for instance, the consistent flashbulb memories on Survey 2 remain consistent on Survey 3? Did the accurate event memories on Survey 1 remain accurate on Survey 2? And did the accurate event memories on Survey 2 remain accurate on Survey 3? The result in Figure 2 suggests that answers to these questions are mostly positive. In examining flashbulb memories, we separated responses concerning “objective” canonical features -- place, informant, ongoing activity at the time of the reception, and the activity immediately following the reception – from the one feature involving emotional reaction. For objective features, a consistent response on Survey 2 led 82% of the time to a consistent response on Survey 3. The results for event memory are similar, with accurate response on Survey 1 remaining accurate on Survey 2 and accurate responses on Survey 2 remaining accurate on Survey 3. The one exception to this pattern is the memories participants reported for their initial emotional reaction. A consistent response on Survey 2 remained consistent on Survey 3 only 44% of the time. This result is in line with our finding that the relative rated strength of different emotions changed across surveys (correlation of emotion z-scores, Table 4 ).

For flashbulb memories, the proportion of consistent responses on Survey 2 that remained consistent on Survey 3 (as indicated by consistency/accuracy ), as well as the proportion of inconsistent responses on Survey 2 corrected , repeated , or given an other response on Survey 3. For event memory, the proportion of accurate responses on Survey 1 accurate on Survey 2 (S2: consistency/accuracy ), the proportion of accurate responses on Survey 2 that were also accurate on Survey 3 (S3: consistency/accuracy ), the proportion of inaccurate responses on Survey 1 corrected , repeated or given an other response on Survey 2, and the proportion of inaccurate responses on Survey 2 corrected , repeated or given an other response on Survey 3. Standard deviations are expressed in error bars.

What about changes to inconsistent/inaccurate responses from one survey to the next? Inconsistent/inaccurate responses in one survey could be followed up in the next survey in at least three ways: through correction, repetition, or alteration. For instance, an inconsistent response on Survey 2 (based on the responses on Survey 1) could be:

• (1) Corrected in Survey 3. This is the proportion of inconsistent responses in Survey 2 revised in Survey 3 to be consistent with what appeared in Survey 1 (the corrected response proportion ),
• (2) Repeated in Survey 3. This is the proportion of inconsistent responses in Survey 2 (when compared to Survey 1) that were repeated in Survey 3 ( the repeated response proportion ),
• (3) Altered in Survey 3 to something other than the response on Survey 1. This is the proportion of inconsistent responses in Survey 2 remembered differently in both Surveys 1 and 3 (the other response proportion ).

In exploring these three options for flashbulb memories and their analogs for event memories, we did not include in our analyses those instances in which participants failed to answer a probe.

Is the frequency of one of these types of change larger than the frequencies associated with the other types? Does the pattern of frequency distribution differ for flashbulb and event memories? For objective features of flashbulb memories, participants tended to repeat their inconsistencies. For these features, there were significant differences between the proportion of repeated responses and the proportion of other responses , as well as between the proportion of repeated responses and corrected responses (both t -tests, p < .001). Such repetitions are concordant with a slowing rate of forgetting between Survey 2 and Survey 3. Moreover, the presence of repetitions suggests that a stable memory is forming after a year delay, with stories about the circumstances in which one learned of the terrorist attack remaining the same over the long-term, even if they are full of inconsistencies with the initial report. In contrast, participants were inclined to report remembering an emotion not reported in their original survey or in Survey 2 over either correcting or repeating a previous response (all t -tests, p < .01). This finding, again, is in line with our report of poor emotional memory.

The changes observed for event memories differed from what we observed for flashbulb memories, with event memories corrected rather than repeated from one survey to the next. We can determine the change in the content of event memories from Surveys 1 to 2 (indicated as S2 on Figure 2 ) and from Surveys 2 to 3 (indicated as S3 in Figure 2 ). We did not include the probe that asked participants to order the events because of the complexities arising when comparing both the degree of change and the nature of this change. For questions involving multiple answers (such as the name of crash sites), we examined each answer separately. As illustrated in Figure 2 , corrected responses were more common than either repeated or other responses, for both Surveys 2 and 3. Moreover, the proportions of corrected responses for event memories were greater on Surveys 2 and 3 than comparable figures for flashbulb memories. (All t-tests were significant at levels less than .005.) As for the uncorrected, inaccurate responses, on Survey 2, participants were as likely to say something else than repeat the errors they made on Survey 1. Survey 3 differed from Survey 2, in that for Survey 3, repeated responses were significantly greater than other responses, t (390) = 3.74, p < .001, d = .38. This latter finding suggests that, like flashbulb memories, a stable event memory may be emerging somewhere between the first and third year. Importantly, though, the content of this stable memory differs from the content of flashbulb memories: Event memories are converging on an accurate rendering of the past, whereas flashbulb memories are converging on personally accepted and confidently held, even if inconsistent, renderings. This difference strengthens the interpretation we advanced when considering the predictor data: That the retention (and forgetting) of flashbulb and event memories over the long-term involves different processes.

In this paper, we explored the long-term retention of flashbulb memories and the associated event memories. We investigated both the rate of forgetting and how different aspects of the memories might be forgotten at different rates, as well as the factors associated with the retention of both flashbulb memories and event memories.

Forgetting over the long-term

In the present study, the rate of forgetting of flashbulb memories in the first year was similar to that observed in other flashbulb memory studies, but, importantly, this rate of forgetting slowed substantially between the first and third year. This converges with other studies demonstrating a slowing rate of forgetting between the first and third years ( Berntsen & Thomsen, 2005 ; Bohannon & Symons, 1992 ). The current study, however, has the advantage of using a test-retest paradigm. The present study brings into question the generality of the results of Schmolck et al (2002), who found an increased rate of forgetting between the first and third years using a similar test-retest paradigm. Horn (2001) has also questioned the generality of Schmock et al., arguing that the steep forgetting Schmolck et al. observed between the fifteen-month and the thirty-second month tests may have been due to interference created by the announcement of the verdict of Simpson's civil trial in the sixteenth month. A similar confound probably does not arise for flashbulb memories of the terrorist attack of 9/11, the Challenger explosion, or the German invasion and withdrawal inasmuch as nothing so similar occurred during the retention periods of the respective studies for their respective samples.

When considered in conjunction with the other studies on long-term retention of flashbulb memories, then, the present study suggests that a slowing in the rate of forgetting after the first year is typical of flashbulb memories. In doing so, it supports and extends the findings of Talarico and Rubin (2003) , that is, that the rate of forgetting follows a similar pattern as found for ordinary autobiographical memories. The rate of forgetting found in the present study was similar to that found in most diary studies: 20% or more the first year and between 5% to 10% thereafter.

Our results also suggest that different aspects of the flashbulb memories may be forgotten at different rates. Memory for emotions can be quite unreliable ( Levine et al., 2006 ). Here we show that, despite the salience of the emotional reaction to flashbulb events such as 9/11, the memories of these emotional reactions tend to be forgotten more quickly than other aspects of the flashbulb memory, even over the long-term. The reason for this rapid forgetting needs to be further explored.

Our event memory results differ from those reported by Bohannon and Symons (1992) for the Challenger explosion, the only flashbulb memory study that examined event memory after three years. Bohannon and Symons found that forgetting continued to occur between the first and third year at approximately the same rate as it did in the first year, basing their conclusion on cross-sectional data, whereas we found a decline in the rate of forgetting when we examined longitudinal data, a finding consistent with work on memory for facts ( Bahrick, 1983 , 1984 ; Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975 ). We explain this difference across studies below.

Do different factors influence flashbulb and event memories?

Although the pattern in the rate of forgetting was the same for flashbulb memories and event memories over a three-year period, subsequent analyses of our data suggested that different processes may underlie these similar patterns. In particular, we failed to find any relation between five predictors (residency, personal loss or inconvenience, emotionality, media attention, and ensuing conversation) and flashbulb memories, but found significant relations for four of the five (all but emotionality) predictors for event memories. Moreover, we found that inconsistent flashbulb memories reported on one survey were repeated on the next survey, whereas inaccurate event memories tended to be corrected on the next survey. These data were not at ceiling, limited in variability, nor specific to the coding scheme we employed.

Other studies of flashbulb memories of 9/11 using a test-retest procedure reported similar failures to find predictors for consistency ( Curci & Luminet, 2006 ; Talarico & Rubin, 2003 ). It may be that various factors interact differently for different people. For example, some people may react emotionally and rehearse a flashbulb memory, whereas others may react emotionally and avoid rehearsing the memory. There could be enough variability in the population in the way various factors combine that comparing the effect of one of them on consistency across a population would be difficult. As a result, researchers might find low correlations for each factor in their flashbulb memory studies, even if in more controlled settings in which each factor is isolated they might find the predicted correlation. Luminet, Curci, and their colleagues have attempted to circumvent this problem by using structural equation modeling. Even this methodological advance has failed to produce uniform results (see Luminet, 2008 , for a review).

Memory practices

Our finding that the levels of media attention and ensuing conversation are correlated with accuracy of event memories suggests these two variables should figure critically in any account of retention of event memories. Both of these activities increase the degree to which the event memory is rehearsed ( Neisser, Winograd, Bergman, Schreiber, Palmer, & Weldon, 1996 ). In keeping with recent calls for a study of cultural products ( Morling & Lamoreaux, 2008 ) and for viewing the mind as extended ( Clark & Chalmers, 1998 ; Wilson, 2004 ), we also want to focus on the activity itself – the media attention or the ensuing conversation. Both media attention and ensuing conversation could be considered memory practices of a community , which refers to the way in which a community intentionally or unintentionally preserves its past ( Bourdieu, 1977 ; for reviews, see Hirst & Manier, 2008 ; Hirst & Meksin, 2008 ; Zerubavel, 1997 ). For many social scientists, memorials and commemorations are the prototypical memory practices ( Gillis, 1994 ). The practices of mass media in covering public, emotionally charged events and even the conversations people have about the event have also been treated as memory practices ( Assmann & Czaplicka, 1995 ; Dayan & Katz, 1992 ; Hirst & Manier, 2008 ; Hirst & Echterhoff, 2008 ; Hoskins, 2007 ; Johnson, 2007 ). For ensuing conversation, people may be inclined to share memories of emotionally intense events, in part because they believe that doing so will help them deal with the emotion ( Rimé, 2007a , 2007b ). They may also discuss such events because of a social mandate. When meeting someone who has lost a loved one, some conversational acknowledgment of the death is mandatory. A similar social mandate may hold for public, emotionally charged events such as 9/11 ( Mehl & Pennebaker, 2003 ). As we saw, the practice of ensuing conversation can vary across communities: The level of conversation in New York, for instance, differed from the level of non-New Yorkers. Within a community, however, memory practices, such as conversations and media attention, appeared to be more uniform.

A social interactional approach suggests that a key to the difference between our results for event memory and those of Bohannon and Symons (1992) may lie in the memory practices surrounding 9/11 and the Challenger explosion. Although we cannot contrast the amount of conversation that followed the Challenger explosion with what followed the 9/11 attack, we can examine attention to the media, at least indirectly, by looking at media coverage (see Shapiro, 2006 , for a similar analysis). Figure 3 plots the accuracy of event memory over a three-year period and a rough estimate of the amount of media coverage of the attack over the same time period. 3 We estimated media coverage by using the New York Times as a reference text on Lexus-Nexus to determine the number of articles in the Times in which the phrase “September 11” or the conjunction of “Challenger” and “explosion” appeared. We then calculated the proportion of mentions over the number of days in the targeted period. To facilitate comparison, we recalibrated both the accuracy scores and the media proportions to z-scores calculated across the three time periods. As Figure 3 indicates, the pattern of forgetting Bohannon and Symons and we observed for event memory nicely mirrors the level of media attention. We found a similar pattern when we used The Boston Globe and U.S. News and World Report as reference texts in Lexus-Nexus.

Relation between media coverage and memory accuracy for facts about the Challenger Explosion and the Terrorist Attack of September 11. Proportions of correctly remembered details were converted into z-scores, as were the frequencies with which an event was covered in the New York Times .

Memory practices might also help account for the differences in changes in content we found for both flashbulb memories and event memories. Event memories tended to be corrected over time. Such correction is what one would expect if a community is constantly retelling the story of the attack. Unlike the retellings, by an individual, which may be subject to cumulative source monitoring failures (e.g., Johnson, 2006 ), a community retelling, especially in the media, tends to be fact-checked, and, ceteris paribus , is presumed to be “correct.” That is, the media can serve a social/cultural reality monitoring function ( Johnson, 2007 ). The Michael Moore effect is a particularly vivid example of the ability of the media to correct inaccurate memories. The one exception to this general trend toward correction appears to be participants' memory for the names of the involved airlines. Memory for this fact continued to decline over the three-year period. This decline could also be explained by referring to community memory practices, if the names of airlines figured less critically in accounts of the 9/11 attack than, for instance, the number of planes. One could tell the story of 9/11 without mentioning the name of the airlines, but it would be much more difficult to avoid mentioning the locations of the attack or the number of planes involved. Films, such as United 93 , came out after the last survey.

Whereas the memory practices of a community no doubt shaped the content of event memories of 9/11, there is little reason to expect that they should have a similar effect on flashbulb memories of 9/11. The memory practice of a community might lead its members to undertake similar mnemonic processing when it comes to memories for events, but, as we noted, members are more likely to be left to their own devises when it comes to flashbulb memories. Moreover, inasmuch as flashbulb memories are unique, a community as a whole rarely retells a single member's flashbulb memory across the community. Even when sharing of a flashbulb memory does occur in a small group, there may be no way to verify the accuracy of many details of a reported memory. Consequently, at least for objective features of flashbulb memories, the errors made at the end of the first year tended to persist into the third year. If a person falsely remembered that she was at work the first year, she tended to continue to remember (falsely) into the third year that she was at work. There may be nothing to lead her to suspect otherwise.

In emphasizing the role of public memory practices to account for the shape of the forgetting of event memories, we have sought to understand what people remember and do not remember, not only in terms of individual internal cognitive processes, but also in terms of community activities. Both approaches are necessary to account for memory for public events. The different forgetting curves observed for event memories can be traced to the way the different events were covered by the media. Moreover, continuing media coverage can account for the corrections that took place over time with event memory. Clearly, an understanding of memories for public events such as the terrorist attack of 9/11 cannot be achieved by pointing only to internal cognitive processes or to social influences on memory, but to the interaction between the two.

Acknowledgments

We thank the many student coders without whom this research project would have been impossible, as well as Brett Sedgewick, who assisted with the supervision of this project.

Support from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health, grant R01-MH0066972, is gratefully acknowledged.

Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/pubs/journals/xge

1 There is much terminological confusion in the literature. First, the term flashbulb memory could be construed as implying an accurate representation of the circumstances in which one learned of the emotionally charged public event. Although we use this term here, we do not mean to imply that the memories are accurate. Second, as used in the flashbulb memory literature, the phrase event memories is rarely qualified, but it is not meant to refer to all event memories, only those that involve events that elicit flashbulb memories. One should more accurately refer to memories for flashbulb events . However, the phrase can, with repetition, become awkward and hence we adopt the convention of referring to memories for flashbulb events simply as event memories .

2 To be specific, we excluded from our classification of “experiencing personal loss or inconvenience,” columns 107, 108, 113–115, 117–121, and 124–126, using the column numbers from the coding manual for Survey 1.

3 Bohannon and Symons (1992) and we tested participants at slightly different delays. Hence, we discuss testing period rather specific testing delays.

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Impact of 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on Research Agenda

Archival notice.

This is an archive page that is no longer being updated. It may contain outdated information and links may no longer function as originally intended.

The pressing need to respond to the disaster of 9/11, understand terrorist behavior and prevent future terrorist acts has shaped NIJ's research, development and evaluation agenda. Since the attacks, the Institute has brought its expertise in forensics, technology and social science to bear on various areas related to terrorism. We have worked in a number of areas:

DNA Identification in Mass Disasters

Improving the criminal justice response to terrorism incidents, assessing potential high-risk targets, terrorist links to other crimes, terrorism's organization, structure and culture, barriers to interagency coordination when responding to terrorist incidents, analyzing terrorism databases.

Lessons Learned From 9/11: DNA Identification in Mass Fatality Incidents, 2006 . The Kinship and Data Analysis Panel (KADAP) is a blue-ribbon panel of forensic scientists assembled by NIJ after the 9/11 attacks to support New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in the identification — through DNA analysis — of the World Trade Center victims. This is a report prepared by a group of the nation's top forensic scientists and published by NIJ that reviews the experiences of the KADAP. The report offers guidance (particularly to the nation's laboratory directors) on preparing a plan for responding to a mass fatality event.  See Lessons Learned From 9/11: DNA Identification in Mass Fatality Incidents, 2006 .

Mass Fatality Incidents: A Guide for Human Forensic Identification, 2005 . This Special Report provides medical examiners and coroners with guidelines for preparing their disaster plan with regard to victim identification and summarizes the victim identification process for other first responders. It discusses the integration of the medical examiner or coroner into the initial response process and describes the roles of various forensic disciplines (including forensic anthropology, radiology, fingerprinting, and DNA analysis) in victim identification. This report represents the experience of dozens of federal, state, international and private forensic experts who took part in the Technical Working Group for Mass Fatality Forensic Identification. See  Mass Fatality Incidents: A Guide for Human Forensic Identification, 2005

Identifying Victims Using DNA: A Guide for Families, 2005. This guide for grieving family members was distributed to victims' families after the 9/11 attacks to help explain the DNA identification process of identifying the remains of a victim through DNA analysis to the public. See Identifying Victims Using DNA: A Guide for Families (pdf, 13 pages) . This document is also available in Spanish (pdf, 14 pages) .

Learning From 9/11: Comparative Case Studies of the Law Enforcement Response, 2009. NIJ funded a study of the two law enforcement agencies that dealt most directly with 9/11 — the New York City Police Department and the Arlington County Police Department. The study found the following: counterterrorism policing is the same as crime policing, the first response priority is to save lives, both departments have greatly expanded counterterrorism training at all levels, and setting up a media relations plan is essential for getting accurate information to victims' family members and the public. See the Research for Practice: Learning From 9/11: Organizational Change in the New York City and Arlington County, Va., Police Departments .

Through-the-Wall Surveillance for Locating Individuals Within Buildings, 2008. NIJ is developing a system that will give law enforcement officers the ability to remotely see people moving within buildings, as opposed to having to place the sensor close to a building wall, thereby lessening law enforcement personnel's exposure to unknown danger. See the final report Standoff Through-the-Wall Imaging Sensor . NIJ also funded the development of a portable device that, while it must be put in close proximity to a building, should be able to detect people who are hiding or trapped behind metal walls or in shipping containers. See the final report Through-the-Wall Surveillance for Locating Individuals Within Buildings.

Improving the Relationship Between Law Enforcement and Arab-American Communities, 2006. NIJ funded one of the first studies to examine the effects of 9/11 on law enforcement agencies and communities with high concentrations of Arab-American residents. The study found that Arab-Americans expressed greater concern about being victimized by federal policies than by individual acts of harassment. In all cases, law enforcement and community members expressed a desire for improved relations. Nonetheless, few jurisdictions actively adopted programs or policies to improve relations. See the final report  Law Enforcement and Arab American Community Relations After September 11, 2001: Engagement in a Time of Uncertainty .

Biometrics Research: Facial and Iris Recognition, 2006. NIJ funded research to produce facial recognition software that extracts facial images from surveillance video, rotates the images in three dimensions, and combines them to produce a single recognizable image. See "Recognize the Face." Another NIJ-funded project evaluated the use of iris recognition technology in New Jersey schools and research in a Navy brig and dozens of U.S. jails on the use of iris scanners to track movements. See the final report Safe Kids, Safe Schools: Evaluating the Use of Iris Recognition Technology in New Egypt, NJ.

Communications Technology. NIJ is developing technologies that will provide law enforcement first responders ready access to the radio spectrum they need, when and where they need it, under all circumstances. These efforts include development of advanced antenna concepts and development of cognitive and software defined radios. Additionally, NIJ has taken a leading role within the Department of Justice in efforts to implement the proposed national public safety broadband network.  

Digital Forensics.   Mobile devices, such as cell phones, are widely used by terrorists and other criminals. The ability to extract forensic data from them is vital. NIJ funding has resulted in the development and introduction of various forensic tools to extract information from mobile digital devices and computer systems.  See  Digital Evidence and Forensics Web pages .

Protective Equipment.  The 9/11 attacks illustrated how law enforcement officers might be called to respond to a variety of situations that previously had been associated with military actions.  NIJ is working to ensure the safety of law enforcement officers. In these efforts NIJ consistently partners with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Products under development include a portable system to decontaminate law enforcement equipment after exposure to pathogens, puncture-resistant gloves to protect the law enforcement responder from various hazards, a full-face respirator (gas mask) that meets the tactical needs of the law enforcement responder, and a duty uniform that offers the law enforcement responder limited protection from chemical, biological and fire hazards.

Standards and Guides. NIJ has published or is in the process of developing a number of standards and guides for equipment that first responders and law enforcement officers can use in preventing, preparing for and responding to terrorism events:  

• Protection. NIJ and a number of partners developed a standard for an ensemble to protect law enforcement officers from chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats. The standard is the first of its kind to address the specific needs of law enforcement (such as the need to handle firearms and the need for the ensembles to be inconspicuous). See the  CBRN Protective Ensemble Standard for Law Enforcement, NIJ Standard-0116.00, 2011. In addition, NIJ produced guides for selecting first responder equipment, such as the Guide for the Selection of Chemical and Biological Decontamination Equipment for Emergency First Responders, NIJ Guide 103-00 (pdf, 96 pages) . NIJ is also developing a performance standard for the protective ensembles worn by bomb technicians to protect them against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
• Robots. NIJ is developing and evaluating standards for robotic products. In collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIJ funding led to the development and publication of a comprehensive set of standard test methods and metrics for emergency response robots. The goal was to improve the logistics and safety of remotely operated robots in urban settings. Learn more: Standard Test Methods for Response Robots (pdf, 94 pages) . Read NIJ's assessment of the Vanguard robot technology (pdf, 6 pages).
• Weapons Detection.  NIJ has developed standards for both hand-held and walk-through  weapons and contraband detectors as well as portable x-ray systems for defeating improvised explosive devices (IEDs). See information about the portable X-ray system .

Improvised Explosive Device (IED) Defeat. Current research and development efforts include development of a universal cutting tool that will interface with any of the existing common robots such as the Andros series, Talon, Pacbot and Vanguard. The Institute also sponsors annual publication of the National Strategic Plan for U.S. Bomb Squads in collaboration with DOD's TSWG. 

Surveillance and detection systems. NIJ is developing a range of technologies that can detect concealed weapons and spot unusual activity that could be related to criminal behavior.

• The Sago ST-150 standoff detector is a system to detect weapons concealed under clothing.  It is now being used in U.S. government and military applications. 
• Other efforts are underway to develop a smart closed-circuit television (CCTV system) and an intelligent, unobtrusive, real-time, continuous monitoring system for assessing activity and predicting emergent suspicious and criminal behavior across a network of distributed cameras.

Securing America’s Passenger Rail Systems, 2007. NIJ funded a study that found that although bombings are the most prevalent terrorist threat to rail systems, most bombings produce few fatalities or injuries. The study also identified 17 options for improving security, some of which are relatively inexpensive. The study also provided transit security managers with a method to evaluate approaches to increasing security and gave practical guidance about how to improve safety efficiently and economically. See the final report Securing America’s Passenger Rail Systems, 2007.

Protecting America’s Ports: Assessing Coordination Between Law Enforcement and Industrial Security, 2007. NIJ funded a study that obtained information about security systems in all 185 American seaports and examined how public-private partnerships operate and focus on terrorism around ports. The study identified a number of promising practices for preventing and preparing for attacks. See the final report Protecting America’s Ports: Assessing Coordination Between Law Enforcement and Industrial Security .

Identifying Links Between White Collar Crime and Terrorism, 2004. NIJ funded a study of the investigation and prosecution of members of a terrorist group (Jamaat Ul Fuqra) in Colorado, identifying the types of white-collar crimes used for funding and identity deception. The study described lessons learned from white-collar crime investigations and provided guidance for state and local police and prosecutors. See the final report Identifying Links Between White Collar Crime and Terrorism .

Methods and Motives: Exploring Links Between Transnational Organized Crime and International Terrorism, 2005.  NIJ funded a study that analyzed the overlap between international organized crime and terrorist groups to develop watch points and indicators of convergence, using open-source information and intelligence analysis tools. See the final report Methods and Motives: Exploring Links Between Transnational Organized Crime and International Terrorism .

Terrorist Recruitment in American Correctional Institutions: An Exploratory Study of Nontraditional Faith Groups, 2007. NIJ funded a study on nontraditional religions in U.S. correctional institutions. The study identified the personal and social motivations for incarcerated individuals' conversions to these faith groups and assessed the risk for terrorist recruitment among these persons. The study found that the danger to U.S. security from adherents to these nontraditional faiths is not the number of adherents, but rather the potential for small groups of radical believers to instigate terrorist acts upon their release from custody. See the final report Terrorist Recruitment in American Correctional Institutions: An Exploratory Study of Non-Traditional Faith Groups

Organizational Learning and Islamic Militancy, 2008.   NIJ funded a study exploring how Islamic terrorists learn to design and execute attacks. The study assessed the Internet's role in facilitating the teaching of terrorist tactics and strategies, and it identified limitations in Islamic terrorists' ability to acquire knowledge on how to design and execute effective attacks. The study found that terrorists' learning is based mostly on hands-on training from other terrorists. The study also found that many terrorist conspiracies are compartmentalized, impeding the free flow of information between novices and more experienced terrorists. See the final report Organizational Learning and Islamic Militancy .

Interagency Coordination: A Case Study of the 2005 London Train Bombings, 2008, and Interagency Coordination: Lessons Learned From the 2005 London Train Bombings, 2008. Researchers produced a two-part series for the NIJ Journal on interagency coordination in responding to the 2005 train bombings in London, England. The articles focus on lessons learned and promising practices for addressing barriers to interagency coordination when responding to large-scale emergencies. See Interagency Coordination: A Case Study of the 2005 London Train Bombings and Interagency Coordination: Lessons Learned From the 2005 London Train Bombings .

Cross-National Comparison of Interagency Coordination Between Law Enforcement and Public Health, 2005.  NIJ funded a study examining the cooperative roles of law enforcement and public health in responding to terrorist threats in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland. The study found common barriers to working together and suggested several measures for successful interagency coordination. See the final report Cross-National Comparison of Interagency Coordination Between Law Enforcement and Public Health .

Building a Global Terrorism Database (University of Maryland). NIJ funded a project to computerize and assess the validity of the original Pinkerton Global Intelligence Service (PGIS) data, which were designed to document every known terrorism event across countries and time frames. The PGIS data collection ended in 1997, exactly the same time that the RAND Corporation began collecting worldwide terrorist incident data. A project at START, the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, brought the data together to produce a geocoded, integrated terrorism event database stretching from 1970 to the present. The database now includes more than 98,000 cases, including date and location of the incident, weapons used and nature of the target, number of casualties, and group or individual responsible (when known). It is by far the most extensive and empirically defensible terrorism event database of this type ever assembled. See the final report Building a Global Terrorism Database .

Pre-Incident Indicators of Terrorist Incidents: The Identification of Behavioral, Geographic, and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Conduct, 2006.  NIJ funded an exploratory analysis of the behavioral, geographic and temporal patterns of preparatory acts to support terrorist events. Researchers found that terrorists typically prepare three to four months before an incident, with measures such as meetings, phone calls, the purchase of supplies and materials, and banking activities (including both bank robbery and legitimate account withdrawals). The spatial analysis revealed that terrorists typically live close to their incident target, with one-half residing and preparing for the incident within 30 miles of the target. See the final report Pre-Incident Indicators of Terrorist Incidents: The Identification of Behavioral, Geographic, and Temporal Patterns of Preparatory Conduct .

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113 Great Research Paper Topics

General Education

One of the hardest parts of writing a research paper can be just finding a good topic to write about. Fortunately we've done the hard work for you and have compiled a list of 113 interesting research paper topics. They've been organized into ten categories and cover a wide range of subjects so you can easily find the best topic for you.

In addition to the list of good research topics, we've included advice on what makes a good research paper topic and how you can use your topic to start writing a great paper.

What Makes a Good Research Paper Topic?

Not all research paper topics are created equal, and you want to make sure you choose a great topic before you start writing. Below are the three most important factors to consider to make sure you choose the best research paper topics.

#1: It's Something You're Interested In

A paper is always easier to write if you're interested in the topic, and you'll be more motivated to do in-depth research and write a paper that really covers the entire subject. Even if a certain research paper topic is getting a lot of buzz right now or other people seem interested in writing about it, don't feel tempted to make it your topic unless you genuinely have some sort of interest in it as well.

#2: There's Enough Information to Write a Paper

Even if you come up with the absolute best research paper topic and you're so excited to write about it, you won't be able to produce a good paper if there isn't enough research about the topic. This can happen for very specific or specialized topics, as well as topics that are too new to have enough research done on them at the moment. Easy research paper topics will always be topics with enough information to write a full-length paper.

Trying to write a research paper on a topic that doesn't have much research on it is incredibly hard, so before you decide on a topic, do a bit of preliminary searching and make sure you'll have all the information you need to write your paper.

#3: It Fits Your Teacher's Guidelines

Don't get so carried away looking at lists of research paper topics that you forget any requirements or restrictions your teacher may have put on research topic ideas. If you're writing a research paper on a health-related topic, deciding to write about the impact of rap on the music scene probably won't be allowed, but there may be some sort of leeway. For example, if you're really interested in current events but your teacher wants you to write a research paper on a history topic, you may be able to choose a topic that fits both categories, like exploring the relationship between the US and North Korea. No matter what, always get your research paper topic approved by your teacher first before you begin writing.

113 Good Research Paper Topics

Below are 113 good research topics to help you get you started on your paper. We've organized them into ten categories to make it easier to find the type of research paper topics you're looking for.

Arts/Culture

• Discuss the main differences in art from the Italian Renaissance and the Northern Renaissance .
• Analyze the impact a famous artist had on the world.
• How is sexism portrayed in different types of media (music, film, video games, etc.)? Has the amount/type of sexism changed over the years?
• How has the music of slaves brought over from Africa shaped modern American music?
• How has rap music evolved in the past decade?
• How has the portrayal of minorities in the media changed?

Current Events

• What have been the impacts of China's one child policy?
• How have the goals of feminists changed over the decades?
• How has the Trump presidency changed international relations?
• Analyze the history of the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
• What factors contributed to the current decline in the rate of unemployment?
• What have been the impacts of states which have increased their minimum wage?
• How do US immigration laws compare to immigration laws of other countries?
• How have the US's immigration laws changed in the past few years/decades?
• How has the Black Lives Matter movement affected discussions and view about racism in the US?
• What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on healthcare in the US?
• What factors contributed to the UK deciding to leave the EU (Brexit)?
• What factors contributed to China becoming an economic power?
• Discuss the history of Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies  (some of which tokenize the S&P 500 Index on the blockchain) .
• Do students in schools that eliminate grades do better in college and their careers?
• Do students from wealthier backgrounds score higher on standardized tests?
• Do students who receive free meals at school get higher grades compared to when they weren't receiving a free meal?
• Do students who attend charter schools score higher on standardized tests than students in public schools?
• Do students learn better in same-sex classrooms?
• How does giving each student access to an iPad or laptop affect their studies?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Montessori Method ?
• Do children who attend preschool do better in school later on?
• What was the impact of the No Child Left Behind act?
• How does the US education system compare to education systems in other countries?
• What impact does mandatory physical education classes have on students' health?
• Which methods are most effective at reducing bullying in schools?
• Do homeschoolers who attend college do as well as students who attended traditional schools?
• Does offering tenure increase or decrease quality of teaching?
• How does college debt affect future life choices of students?
• Should graduate students be able to form unions?

• What are different ways to lower gun-related deaths in the US?
• How and why have divorce rates changed over time?
• Is affirmative action still necessary in education and/or the workplace?
• Should physician-assisted suicide be legal?
• How has stem cell research impacted the medical field?
• How can human trafficking be reduced in the United States/world?
• Should people be able to donate organs in exchange for money?
• Which types of juvenile punishment have proven most effective at preventing future crimes?
• Has the increase in US airport security made passengers safer?
• Analyze the immigration policies of certain countries and how they are similar and different from one another.
• Several states have legalized recreational marijuana. What positive and negative impacts have they experienced as a result?
• Do tariffs increase the number of domestic jobs?
• Which prison reforms have proven most effective?
• Should governments be able to censor certain information on the internet?
• Which methods/programs have been most effective at reducing teen pregnancy?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks of the Keto diet?
• How effective are different exercise regimes for losing weight and maintaining weight loss?
• How do the healthcare plans of various countries differ from each other?
• What are the most effective ways to treat depression ?
• What are the pros and cons of genetically modified foods?
• Which methods are most effective for improving memory?
• What can be done to lower healthcare costs in the US?
• What factors contributed to the current opioid crisis?
• Analyze the history and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic .
• Are low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets more effective for weight loss?
• How much exercise should the average adult be getting each week?
• Which methods are most effective to get parents to vaccinate their children?
• What are the pros and cons of clean needle programs?
• How does stress affect the body?
• Discuss the history of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
• What were the causes and effects of the Salem Witch Trials?
• Who was responsible for the Iran-Contra situation?
• How has New Orleans and the government's response to natural disasters changed since Hurricane Katrina?
• What events led to the fall of the Roman Empire?
• What were the impacts of British rule in India ?
• Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?
• What were the successes and failures of the women's suffrage movement in the United States?
• What were the causes of the Civil War?
• How did Abraham Lincoln's assassination impact the country and reconstruction after the Civil War?
• Which factors contributed to the colonies winning the American Revolution?
• What caused Hitler's rise to power?
• Discuss how a specific invention impacted history.
• What led to Cleopatra's fall as ruler of Egypt?
• How has Japan changed and evolved over the centuries?
• What were the causes of the Rwandan genocide ?

• Why did Martin Luther decide to split with the Catholic Church?
• Analyze the history and impact of a well-known cult (Jonestown, Manson family, etc.)
• How did the sexual abuse scandal impact how people view the Catholic Church?
• How has the Catholic church's power changed over the past decades/centuries?
• What are the causes behind the rise in atheism/ agnosticism in the United States?
• What were the influences in Siddhartha's life resulted in him becoming the Buddha?
• How has media portrayal of Islam/Muslims changed since September 11th?

Science/Environment

• How has the earth's climate changed in the past few decades?
• How has the use and elimination of DDT affected bird populations in the US?
• Analyze how the number and severity of natural disasters have increased in the past few decades.
• Analyze deforestation rates in a certain area or globally over a period of time.
• How have past oil spills changed regulations and cleanup methods?
• How has the Flint water crisis changed water regulation safety?
• What are the pros and cons of fracking?
• What impact has the Paris Climate Agreement had so far?
• What have NASA's biggest successes and failures been?
• How can we improve access to clean water around the world?
• Does ecotourism actually have a positive impact on the environment?
• Should the US rely on nuclear energy more?
• What can be done to save amphibian species currently at risk of extinction?
• What impact has climate change had on coral reefs?
• How are black holes created?
• Are teens who spend more time on social media more likely to suffer anxiety and/or depression?
• How will the loss of net neutrality affect internet users?
• Analyze the history and progress of self-driving vehicles.
• How has the use of drones changed surveillance and warfare methods?
• Has social media made people more or less connected?
• What progress has currently been made with artificial intelligence ?
• Do smartphones increase or decrease workplace productivity?
• What are the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom?
• How is Google search affecting our intelligence?
• When is the best age for a child to begin owning a smartphone?
• Has frequent texting reduced teen literacy rates?

How to Write a Great Research Paper

Even great research paper topics won't give you a great research paper if you don't hone your topic before and during the writing process. Follow these three tips to turn good research paper topics into great papers.

#1: Figure Out Your Thesis Early

Before you start writing a single word of your paper, you first need to know what your thesis will be. Your thesis is a statement that explains what you intend to prove/show in your paper. Every sentence in your research paper will relate back to your thesis, so you don't want to start writing without it!

As some examples, if you're writing a research paper on if students learn better in same-sex classrooms, your thesis might be "Research has shown that elementary-age students in same-sex classrooms score higher on standardized tests and report feeling more comfortable in the classroom."

If you're writing a paper on the causes of the Civil War, your thesis might be "While the dispute between the North and South over slavery is the most well-known cause of the Civil War, other key causes include differences in the economies of the North and South, states' rights, and territorial expansion."

#2: Back Every Statement Up With Research

Remember, this is a research paper you're writing, so you'll need to use lots of research to make your points. Every statement you give must be backed up with research, properly cited the way your teacher requested. You're allowed to include opinions of your own, but they must also be supported by the research you give.

#3: Do Your Research Before You Begin Writing

You don't want to start writing your research paper and then learn that there isn't enough research to back up the points you're making, or, even worse, that the research contradicts the points you're trying to make!

Get most of your research on your good research topics done before you begin writing. Then use the research you've collected to create a rough outline of what your paper will cover and the key points you're going to make. This will help keep your paper clear and organized, and it'll ensure you have enough research to produce a strong paper.

What's Next?

Are you also learning about dynamic equilibrium in your science class? We break this sometimes tricky concept down so it's easy to understand in our complete guide to dynamic equilibrium .

Thinking about becoming a nurse practitioner? Nurse practitioners have one of the fastest growing careers in the country, and we have all the information you need to know about what to expect from nurse practitioner school .

Want to know the fastest and easiest ways to convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius? We've got you covered! Check out our guide to the best ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (or vice versa).

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Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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We examine “agglomeration shadows” that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and “wave interference” that we show in simulations. We use the locations of...

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Identifying Agglomeration Shadows: Long-run Evidence from Ancient Ports

We examine “agglomeration shadows” that emerge around large cities, which discourage some economic activities in nearby areas. Identifying agglomeration shadows is complicated, however, by endogenous city formation and “wave interference” that we show in simulations. We use the locations of ancient ports near the Mediterranean, which seeded modern cities, to estimate agglomeration shadows cast on nearby areas. We find that empirically, as in the simulations, detectable agglomeration shadows emerge for large cities around ancient ports. These patterns extend to modern city locations more generally, and illustrate how encouraging growth in particular places can discourage growth of nearby areas.

• Richard Hornbeck

Firms’ Perceived Cost of Capital

On recoding ordered treatments as binary indicators, can machines learn weak signals.

Industrial Policy in the Global Semiconductor Sector

The resurgence of subsidies and industrial policies has raised concerns about their potential inefficiency and alignment with multilateral principles. Critics warn that such policies may divert resources to less efficient firms and provoke retaliatory measures from other countries, leading to a wasteful "subsidy race." However, subsidies for sectors with inherent cross-border externalities can have positive global effects. This paper examines these issues within the semiconductor industry: a key driver of economic growth and innovation with potentially significant learning-by-doing and strategic importance due to its dual-use applications. Our study aims to: (1) document and quantify recent industrial policies in the global semiconductor sector, (2) explore the rationale behind these policies, and (3) evaluate their economic impacts, particularly their cross-border effects, and compatibility with multilateral principles. We employ historical analysis, natural language processing, and a model-based approach to measure government support and its impacts. Our findings indicate that government support has been vital for the industry's growth, with subsidies being the primary form of support. They also highlight the importance of cross-border technology transfers through FDI, business and research collaborations, and technology licensing. China, despite significant subsidies, does not stand out as an outlier compared to other countries, given its market size.

Preliminary model estimates indicate that while learning-by-doing exists, it is smaller than commonly believed, with significant international spillovers. These spillovers likely reflect cross-country technology transfers and the role of fabless clients in disseminating knowledge globally through their interactions with foundries. Such cross-border spillovers are not merely accidental but result from deliberate actions by market participants that cannot be taken for granted. Firms may choose to share knowledge across borders or restrict access to frontier technology, thereby excluding certain countries. Future research will use model estimates to simulate the quantitative implications of subsidies and to explore the dynamics of a ``subsidy race'' in the semiconductor industry.

We are grateful to Ralph Ossa, Bob Staiger, and Dan Trefler for suggesting this project. We thank Panle Barwick, Chad Bown, Simon Evenett, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Brian Kovak, Ryan Michaels and John Minnich for helpful conversations, Shrikant Lohokare and Jessica Mueller at the Global Semiconductor Alliance for providing the data used to estimate the model, and participants of the "Expert Dialog on Subsidy Reform'' Conference in Washington, DC, for many useful comments. We are grateful to Kisho Hoshi, Richard Jung, Stephen Xu, and Esha Vaze for their excellent research assistance. Réka and Nathan gratefully acknowledge funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. All errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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How Pew Research Center Uses Its National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS)

In 2020, Pew Research Center launched a new project called the  National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) . NPORS is an annual, cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults. Respondents can answer by paper, online or over the phone, and they are selected using address-based sampling from the United States Postal Service’s Computerized Delivery Sequence File. The response rate to the latest NPORS was 32%, and previous years’ surveys were designed with a similarly rigorous approach. 

NPORS estimates are separate from the  American Trends Panel  (ATP) – the Center’s national online survey platform. Pew Research Center launched NPORS to address a limitation that researchers observed in the ATP. While the ATP was well-suited for the vast majority of the Center’s U.S. survey work, estimates for a few outcomes were not in line with other high-quality surveys, even after weighting to demographics like age, education, race and ethnicity, and gender.

For example, in 2018, roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults were religiously unaffiliated (i.e., atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular”), according to the General Social Survey (GSS) and the Center’s own telephone-based polling . The ATP, however,  estimated the religiously unaffiliated rate at about 32%. The Center did not feel comfortable publishing that ATP estimate because there was too much evidence that the rate was too high, likely because the types of people willing to participate in an online panel skew less religious than the population as a whole. Similarly, the ATP estimate for the share of U.S. adults identifying as a Democrat or leaning to the Democratic Party was somewhat higher than the rate indicated by the GSS and our own telephone surveys .

From 2014 to late 2020, the Center approached these outcomes slightly differently. We addressed the political partisanship issue by weighting every ATP survey to an external benchmark for the share of Americans identifying as a Republican, Democrat or independent. For the benchmark, we used the average of the results from our three most recent national cellphone and landline random-digit-dial (RDD) surveys. 

During this time period, ATP surveys were not weighted to an external benchmark for Americans’ religious affiliation. The ATP was used for some research on religious beliefs and behaviors, but it was not used to estimate the overall share of Americans identifying as religiously affiliated or unaffiliated, nor was it used to estimate the size of particular faith groups, such as Catholics, Protestants or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. NPORS allows us to improve and harmonize our approach to both these outcomes (Americans’ political and religious affiliations). 

Design and estimates

Read our fact sheet to find the latest NPORS estimates as well as methodological details. Data collection for NPORS was performed by Ipsos from 2020 through 2023 and is now performed by SSRS. 

Why is the NPORS response rate higher than most opinion polls?

Several features of NPORS set it apart from a typical public opinion poll. 

• People can respond offline or online.  NPORS offers three different ways to respond: by paper (through the mail), online, or by telephone (by calling a provided phone number and speaking to a live interviewer). The paper and telephone options bring in more conservative, more religious adults who are less inclined to take surveys online.
• Monetary incentives.  When sampled adults are first asked to respond to NPORS online, the mailing contains a $2 incentive payment (cash visible from the outside of the envelope) and offers a $10 incentive payment contingent on the participant completing the survey. When nonrespondents to that first stage are sent the paper version of the survey, the mailing contains a visible $5 bill. These incentives give people a reason to respond, even if they might not be interested in the questions or inclined to take surveys in general. 
• Priority mailing.  The paper version of the survey is mailed in a USPS Priority Mail envelope, which is more expensive than a normal envelope, signaling that the contents are important and that the mailing is not haphazard. It helps people distinguish the survey from junk mail, increasing the likelihood that they open and read what is inside. 
• Low burden.  The NPORS questionnaire is intentionally kept short. It’s about 40 questions long, including demographics such as age, gender and education. This means that NPORS takes about seven minutes to finish, while many polls take 10 minutes or longer. 
• Bilingual materials.  In parts of the country with sizable shares of Hispanic Americans, the materials are sent in both English and Spanish. 
• No requirement to join a panel.  NPORS respondents are not required to join a survey panel, which for some people would be a reason to decline the request. 

These features are not possible in most public polls for a host of reasons. But NPORS is designed to produce estimates of high enough quality that they can be used as weighting benchmarks for other polls, and so these features are critical.

Why a ‘reference’ survey for public opinion?

The “R” in NPORS stands for “reference.” In this context, the term comes from  studies  in which researchers calibrate a small sample survey to a large, high-quality survey with greater precision and accuracy. Examples of reference surveys used by researchers include the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS). NPORS is not on the scale of the ACS or CPS, nor does it feature face-to-face data collection. But it does have something that those studies lack: timely estimates of key public opinion outcomes. Other studies like the American National Election Survey (ANES) and the General Social Survey collect key public opinion measures, but their data is released months, if not years, after data collection. The ANES, while invaluable to academic researchers, also excludes noncitizens who constitute about 7% of adults living in the U.S. and are included in the Center’s surveys.

NPORS is truly a reference survey for Pew Research Center because researchers weight each American Trends Panel wave to several NPORS estimates. In other words, ATP surveys refer to NPORS in order to represent groups like Republicans, Democrats, religiously affiliated adults and religiously unaffiliated adults proportional to their share of the U.S. population. The ATP weighting protocol also calibrates to other benchmarks, such as ACS demographic figures and CPS benchmarks for voter registration status and volunteerism.

Pew Research Center is weighting on political party affiliation, but isn’t that an attitude?

It’s correct that whether someone considers themselves a Republican or a Democrat is an attitude, not a fixed characteristic, such as year of birth. But there is a way to weight on political party affiliation even though it is an attitude and without forcing the poll’s partisan distribution to align with a benchmark. 

Pew Research Center started implementing this approach in 2021. It begins with measuring the survey panelists’ political party affiliation at a certain point in time (typically, each summer). Ideally, the reference survey will measure the same construct at the same point in time. We launched NPORS because we control its timing as well as the American Trends Panel’s timing, allowing us to achieve this syncing.

NPORS and ATP measurements of political party are collected at approximately the same time each summer. We may then conduct roughly 25 surveys on the ATP over the next year. For each of those 25 surveys, we append the panelists’ party affiliation answers from the summer  to the current survey. To illustrate, let’s say that a survey was conducted in December. When researchers weight the December ATP survey, they take the measurement of party taken in the summer and weight that to the NPORS estimates for the partisan distribution of U.S. adults during the summer time frame. If, for example, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to respond to the December survey, the weighting to the NPORS target would help reduce the differential partisan nonresponse bias. 

Critically, if the hypothetical December poll featured a fresh measurement of political party affiliation (typically asked about three times a year on the ATP), the new December answers do  not  get forced to any target. The new partisan distribution is allowed to vary. In this way, we can both address the threat from differential partisan nonresponse and measure an attitude that changes over time (without dictating the outcome). Each summer, the process starts anew by measuring political party on the ATP at basically the same time as the NPORS data collection. 

Is the NPORS design connected to the American Trends Panel?

A key feature of NPORS is that respondents are not members of a survey panel. It is a fresh, random sample of U.S. adults. This matters because some people are willing to take a onetime survey like NPORS but are not interested in taking surveys on an ongoing basis as part of a panel. That said, in certain years, NPORS serves as a recruitment survey for the ATP. After the NPORS questions, we ask respondents if they would be willing to take future surveys. People who accept and those who decline are both part of the NPORS survey. But only those who consent to future surveys are eventually invited to join the ATP.

Can other survey researchers use NPORS?

Yes. As a nonprofit organization, we seek to make our research as useful to policymakers, survey practitioners and scholars as possible. As with the Center’s other survey work, the estimates and data are freely available. 

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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 .

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MIT researchers introduce generative AI for databases

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A new tool makes it easier for database users to perform complicated statistical analyses of tabular data without the need to know what is going on behind the scenes.

GenSQL, a generative AI system for databases, could help users make predictions, detect anomalies, guess missing values, fix errors, or generate synthetic data with just a few keystrokes.

For instance, if the system were used to analyze medical data from a patient who has always had high blood pressure, it could catch a blood pressure reading that is low for that particular patient but would otherwise be in the normal range.

GenSQL automatically integrates a tabular dataset and a generative probabilistic AI model, which can account for uncertainty and adjust their decision-making based on new data.

Moreover, GenSQL can be used to produce and analyze synthetic data that mimic the real data in a database. This could be especially useful in situations where sensitive data cannot be shared, such as patient health records, or when real data are sparse.

This new tool is built on top of SQL, a programming language for database creation and manipulation that was introduced in the late 1970s and is used by millions of developers worldwide.

“Historically, SQL taught the business world what a computer could do. They didn’t have to write custom programs, they just had to ask questions of a database in high-level language. We think that, when we move from just querying data to asking questions of models and data, we are going to need an analogous language that teaches people the coherent questions you can ask a computer that has a probabilistic model of the data,” says Vikash Mansinghka ’05, MEng ’09, PhD ’09, senior author of a paper introducing GenSQL and a principal research scientist and leader of the Probabilistic Computing Project in the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

When the researchers compared GenSQL to popular, AI-based approaches for data analysis, they found that it was not only faster but also produced more accurate results. Importantly, the probabilistic models used by GenSQL are explainable, so users can read and edit them.

“Looking at the data and trying to find some meaningful patterns by just using some simple statistical rules might miss important interactions. You really want to capture the correlations and the dependencies of the variables, which can be quite complicated, in a model. With GenSQL, we want to enable a large set of users to query their data and their model without having to know all the details,” adds lead author Mathieu Huot, a research scientist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and member of the Probabilistic Computing Project.

They are joined on the paper by Matin Ghavami and Alexander Lew, MIT graduate students; Cameron Freer, a research scientist; Ulrich Schaechtle and Zane Shelby of Digital Garage; Martin Rinard, an MIT professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and Feras Saad ’15, MEng ’16, PhD ’22, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. The research was recently presented at the ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation.

Combining models and databases

SQL, which stands for structured query language, is a programming language for storing and manipulating information in a database. In SQL, people can ask questions about data using keywords, such as by summing, filtering, or grouping database records.

However, querying a model can provide deeper insights, since models can capture what data imply for an individual. For instance, a female developer who wonders if she is underpaid is likely more interested in what salary data mean for her individually than in trends from database records.

The researchers noticed that SQL didn’t provide an effective way to incorporate probabilistic AI models, but at the same time, approaches that use probabilistic models to make inferences didn’t support complex database queries.

They built GenSQL to fill this gap, enabling someone to query both a dataset and a probabilistic model using a straightforward yet powerful formal programming language.

A GenSQL user uploads their data and probabilistic model, which the system automatically integrates. Then, she can run queries on data that also get input from the probabilistic model running behind the scenes. This not only enables more complex queries but can also provide more accurate answers.

For instance, a query in GenSQL might be something like, “How likely is it that a developer from Seattle knows the programming language Rust?” Just looking at a correlation between columns in a database might miss subtle dependencies. Incorporating a probabilistic model can capture more complex interactions.   

Plus, the probabilistic models GenSQL utilizes are auditable, so people can see which data the model uses for decision-making. In addition, these models provide measures of calibrated uncertainty along with each answer.

For instance, with this calibrated uncertainty, if one queries the model for predicted outcomes of different cancer treatments for a patient from a minority group that is underrepresented in the dataset, GenSQL would tell the user that it is uncertain, and how uncertain it is, rather than overconfidently advocating for the wrong treatment.

Faster and more accurate results

To evaluate GenSQL, the researchers compared their system to popular baseline methods that use neural networks. GenSQL was between 1.7 and 6.8 times faster than these approaches, executing most queries in a few milliseconds while providing more accurate results.

They also applied GenSQL in two case studies: one in which the system identified mislabeled clinical trial data and the other in which it generated accurate synthetic data that captured complex relationships in genomics.

Next, the researchers want to apply GenSQL more broadly to conduct largescale modeling of human populations. With GenSQL, they can generate synthetic data to draw inferences about things like health and salary while controlling what information is used in the analysis.

They also want to make GenSQL easier to use and more powerful by adding new optimizations and automation to the system. In the long run, the researchers want to enable users to make natural language queries in GenSQL. Their goal is to eventually develop a ChatGPT-like AI expert one could talk to about any database, which grounds its answers using GenSQL queries.   

This research is funded, in part, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Google, and the Siegel Family Foundation.

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