ATLANTA — Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, a generation of college students is now learning about the events as part of their history classes.
Georgia State University history professor Larry Grubbs teaches about the attacks as part of his lessons on the George W. Bush presidency.
Grubbs said the period illustrates how the country initially came together following the attacks before divisions emerged.
“The way that he initially was very successful at unifying the country in a way that would be very difficult to imagine today, but that only lasted very briefly,” Grubbs said.
Grubbs also teaches students about the broader impact of the attacks beyond the United States.
“It’s a global event and a global phenomenon, its had global repercussions many of which are quite regrettable,” Grubbs said.
He points to changes in security and surveillance as one of the most noticeable differences in everyday life since 2001.
“The spread of security and surveillance apparatuses in so many areas of life, that’s perhaps the most tangible and immediate thing,” Grubbs said.
Grubbs also notes how dramatically the way people receive breaking news has changed. In 2001, many people learned about the attacks through landline phone calls, television or car radios. Today, he said, information would arrive much faster through smartphones and other digital technology.
“Today, if a similar event occurs, you’d be getting a notification on your smartphone, you would be engaging immediately in some kind of digital technology that would be much more instantaneous,” Grubbs said.
Looking back on the years since the attacks, Grubbs described the period simply: “It’s been an intense quarter-century.”
WSB Radio’s Ashley Simmons & Michelle Wright contributed to this story.