Teaching Sept. 11

Photo by Kevin Matthews

UCLA political scientist Marc Trachtenberg, who teaches a Burkle Center-backed course on the post-9/11 world, explains in a newspaper article that current events can be approached with detachment.

"The World After 9/11," a course taught by Marc Trachtenberg, UCLA professor of political science, was featured in the June 4, 2007, edition of the San Bernardino County Star.

In the article, "Sept. 11 taught as history," Trachtenburg counsels college instructors to suspend political judgments in the classroom and focus on students' critical thinking skiills.

Trachtenburg's innovative course relies on general-interest articles and videotaped lectures by scholars with differing views on history and current events. The article notes that he does not rely on textbooks, quoting him as saying that textbooks are "not as a rule written by well-trained scholars whose fundamental goal is to get at the truth. They have to be approved by government agencies, and thus have to take a politically acceptable line."

The UCLA Burkle Center has provided funding for graduate teaching assistants for Trachtenberg's course, in partnership with the Department of Political Science.

Published: Tuesday, June 5, 2007

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Teaching Sept. 11

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UCLA political scientist Marc Trachtenberg, who teaches a Burkle Center-backed course on the post-9/11 world, explains in a newspaper article that current events can be approached with detachment.