Luther College professor wants full breadth of 9/11 history taught

DECORAH, Iowa (KCRG) - 20 years after 9/11, one teacher at Luther College said he worries about how it was taught to students born just before, or even after, the event happened.

“The students who are enrolled here have no living memory. Some are even born after it,” Todd Green, associate professor of religion at the school, said.

Green also teaches classes on Islamophobia. He wants some of the issues that came after 9/11 to be taught along with the attacks.

“It’s possible, both, to remember the lives lost on that day, the innocent people who died in the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center, and the field in Pennsylvania, to remember the first responders who died, and honor their lives. And really continue to grieve those, collectively, as a nation,” Green said. “And, also have empathy for, and compassion for, all of the lives that were affected in the aftermath of 9/11 due to the war on terror.”

Green said, when teaching about 9/11, people need to know what led to events, honor those who died, but also how it impacts others.

“When we have the mantra of ‘never forget’ but we only remember the lives lost on that day, which we should remember, and don’t remember the lives lost or lives negatively impacted after that day under the mantra of ‘never forget,’ under the foreign policy and the domestic policy that was fueled by that call never to forget, then we are not doing a service to the dignity of human lives across the world,” Green said.

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