Twenty-Five Years After 9/11

RSVP In-Person

Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, their consequences continue to shape United States foreign policy, military institutions, and public memory, as well as life across the Middle East and Central Asia.

George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and the Quincy Institute’s Veterans in Foreign Policy Initiative is pleased to host an interdisciplinary panel of scholars of the Middle East and military history to examine how the United States and the Middle East were transformed by 9/11 and the wars that followed. The discussion will consider the evolution of the U.S. military and the “Global War on Terror,” the consequences of prolonged counterinsurgency and nation-building campaigns, the changing politics of the Middle East, and how 9/11 affected the lives of the people who live there, with attention to both state politics and the experiences of ordinary people.

Panelists will offer brief presentations followed by an extended moderated discussion and audience questions.

Speakers:

• Dr. Sultan Alamer is a Resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Policy Council and a member of the editorial committee of Alpheratz magazine. He is also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. Alamer’s research focuses on nationalism and nation-building, governance and technology, and regional politics in the broader Middle East, with a special focus on the Arab Gulf countries. Alamer is the co-founder and a member of the executive committee of the Arab Political Science Network. He is also a Bucerius Fellow at Zeit-Stiftung Ebling und Gerd Bucerius. He has written for New Lines Magazine, the Arab Reform Initiative, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Research and Information Project, the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, The Gulf Center for Development Policies, and Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum. He was a weekly syndicated op-ed writer for the Arab international newspapers Al-Hayat and Al-Arabi Al-Jadid, and the Saudi newspapers Okaz and Al-Bilad.

• Dr. Ilai Saltzman is an Associate Research Professor of Israel Studies, and the Director of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland at College Park. His scholarship and teaching focus on international security, Israeli foreign and security policy, US foreign policy, and political psychology. Dr. Saltzman is the author of Securitizing Balance of Power Theory: A Polymorphic Reconceptualization (2012). He is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, and of commentaries in Foreign Affairs, the Los Angeles Times, Ha’aretz, The Jerusalem Post, and other prominent outlets. Dr. Saltzman earned his Ph.D. in International Relations in 2010 from the University of Haifa, and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Security Program (ISP), Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2009-2010).

• Dr. David Kieran is the Professor of History and the Colonel Richard R. Hallock Distinguished University Chair in Military History at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA, where he is also the Director of the Institute for the Study of the American Military Experience. He is a Trustee of the Society For Military History and was the 2024-25 Harold K. Johnson Chair of Military History at the US Army War College. He is the author of  Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military’s Mental Health Crisis (NYU, 2019) and Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory (Massachusetts, 2014) as well as the editor of The War of My Generation: Youth Culture and the War on Terror (Rutgers, 2015). He also co-edited The US Army and Social Change (Forthcoming, Cornell University Press) with Beth Bailey, Remote Warfare: New Cultures of Violence (Minnesota, 2020) with Rebecca A. Adelman, and At War: The Military and American Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Rutgers, 2018) with Edwin A. Martini. He is currently writing a history of organizational change in the U.S. Army after Vietnam, How the Army Saved Itself: Maxwell R. Thurman and the Army’s Post Vietnam Metamorphosis (under contract, North Carolina), and co-editing The Long War: American Experiences in Iraq (with Michael Denehy, under contract with University of Kansas Press).

• Dr. Melani McAlister is a Professor of American Studies and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at The George Washington University. Her most recent book, Promises, then the Storm: Notes on Memory, Protest, and the Israel-Gaza War, is an accessible guide to the first year of the war and examines the history and politics of Palestine and Israel, the role of the media, and the power of activism. Her other books include The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (Oxford University Press (rev. ed. 2022; orig. 2018), and Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945 (rev. ed. 2005, orig. 2001). She is also the co-editor of several anthologies: The Cambridge History of America in the World, Volume 4 (2021), with David Engerman and Max Friedman; Global Faith and Worldly Power, co-edited with Axel Schaefer and John Corrigan (UNC, 2022); From Anarchy to Chaos: Generation(s) of Empire, a special issue of American Quarterly, Sept. 2022; and Religion and Politics in the Contemporary United States, co-edited with R. Marie Griffith (2008).

• Adam Weinstein is deputy director of the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute and director of QI’s Veterans in Foreign Policy Initiative. His current research focuses on security and rule of law in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq He is also a non-resident fellow at Tadblab, a think tank and advisory firm based in Islamabad, and regularly travels throughout Pakistan. Adam’s analysis has been featured in the Washington Post, Guardian, Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, Lawfare, and The National Interest. Before coming to the Quincy Institute, he worked for KPMG’s international trade practice and assisted multinational clients in navigating Asia’s changing trade landscape, incorporating human rights due diligence into supply chains, managing sanctions risk, and utilizing free trade agreements. He also worked as senior law and policy analyst at the National Iranian American Council where he focused on the securitization of U.S. immigration policy and its effect on immigrant communities. Adam received a J.D. from Temple University Beasley School of Law with a concentration in international law and transitional justice. He served as a US Marine and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012 as part of a detachment to the 2nd Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company where he served in Uruzgan Province in support of Australia’s 2nd Commando Regiment.