As the 25th anniversary of September 11th approaches, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding invites you to a virtual conversation examining how the Global War on Terror transformed the United States, and how its legacy continues to shape our democracy today. In the aftermath of 9/11, wars abroad were accompanied by sweeping changes at home: mass surveillance, religious and racial profiling, secret watchlists, indefinite detention, restrictions on due process, and broader authority for law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Although many of these policies were initially presented as targeted responses to terrorism, Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and immigrant communities often became the testing ground for practices that would later reach far beyond them. Twenty-five years later, the consequences are visible in intensified immigration enforcement, attacks on constitutional protections, the criminalization of protest, and the normalization of extraordinary executive power. What happens when the erosion of some communities’ rights is accepted as the price of security? How did post-9/11 policies weaken the democratic safeguards intended to protect everyone? And what lessons must we carry forward as the country confronts rising authoritarianism and renewed threats to civil liberties?
Join ISPU and leading scholars, legal experts, journalists, and advocates for a timely discussion about how the last quarter-century’s national security policies laid the groundwork for the moment we’re in now, and what it will take to defend democratic rights and institutions in the years ahead.
Speakers:
- Gadeir Abbas, Deputy Legal Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations
- Tuqa Nusairat, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Executive Director