Teaching the Day After: An Assessment of American University Pedagogy in the Wake of September 11, 2001

Abstract

This article presents data drawn from a confidential, voluntary survey conducted the week after September 11, 2001, at a large, state-funded Midwestern university, asking university faculty to describe the ways they engaged with students in their classrooms in the wake of the events. Acknowledging the charges against academics by some who felt faculty had abused their responsibilities as teachers and public intellectuals, we recast the debate over the political nature of faculty classroom strategies by setting the questions raised by critics, and by faculty responses to the survey, in the context of the development of mass education in the United States.