FSU history professor explains how Gen Z processes 9/11

For a generation of college students, 9/11 is history rather than memory.

As the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, most of today’s college students were not yet born when hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in Pennsylvania. At Florida State University, Professor of History Paul Renfro is helping students understand an event they did not experience firsthand but whose consequences have shaped much of their lives.

In his “U.S. in the 21st Century” course, Renfro uses firsthand accounts and online conversations from Sept. 11 to show students not only what happened, but how people experienced and made sense of the attacks in real time. Two important sources include the Columbia University 9/11 Oral History Project and the Metafilter community blog.

As the internet continued its rapid acceleration in 2001, Metafilter’s pioneering blog was flooded with user comments and speculation from the first moments of 9/11, offering a parallel to today’s social media world that also tends to circulate misinformation during extraordinary moments.

Renfro says these early-source documents and forums help to write historical events and understand real-time reaction.

“In that way, it’s not only a wonderful primary source document, it also kind of exemplifies how history is made, and how the first draft of history is written,” he said.

While there is no way for much of Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, to recollect the day, the aftermath is easier to understand. Renfro discusses how the memory of 9/11 has created broader foreign policy actions that are still felt today.

“I think that is where students kind of intervene, or they understand how that happened, because they do comprehend what the global war on terror has done; that’s something that has impacted their lives,” Renfro added. “As a single day, 9/11 is not something they’re going to be entirely familiar with.”

One of Renfro’s most salient points in educating his students about 9/11 is how national trauma can inform decision-making. He believes this is an outcome Gen Z can relate to based on traumatic events that have unfolded in recent years, referring to a history podcast he listens to that defines the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as a period of national psychosis.

“I think to a lot of students, that really resonates with them, not because they understand that feeling on a fundamental level, but they can see how that might happen,” Renfro said of nationwide terror. “That this fear and confusion can grip the country. That formula is something I really want them to understand, and I think they start to get it when they see that national trauma can sadly open the door for more trauma.”

Media interested in interviewing FSU Professor of History Paul Renfro on the path to 9/11 education for Gen Z can reach out to him via email at prenfro@fsu.edu.