Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

A group of Syracuse University undergraduate student fellows traveled to Cornell University Monday to present their findings on American media coverage of the war on terror.

The event, called “Terrorist or Hero? What the News Said About a Pakistani Man at the World Trade Center,” was held on the story of Mohammad Salman Hamdani, a Pakistani-American man who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

SU’s Lender Center for Social Justice fellows team found that Hamdani’s case is “representative of the impact the news media can have in the normalization of South Asian and Muslim-identifying people being a securitized population throughout the ongoing War on Terror,” according to the website. The group also connected Hamdani’s story to coverage of cases of entrapment of Muslim men by the FBI in sting operations through the use of data-driven news audits, the website states.

“I grew up seeing a lot of coverage of the war on terror, both on mainstream media and in alternative media, and it’s been an interest of mine to analyze how this particular domestic and international war has been framed for American populations,” said Nausheen Husain, who led the presentation at Cornell.

The Lender Center is a resource at SU that provides research opportunities related to social justice issues. Every year, it offers two-year-long fellowships for students to do research and a writing project in collaboration with a faculty fellow at the Lender Center. This year’s team of fellows include SU students Mohammad Ebad Athar, Olivia Boyer, Azadeh Ghanizadeh, Mary Hanrahan and Tia Poquette.

Husain, a professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, focuses her research on news coverage of the war on terror. Before becoming a professor at SU, Husain worked as a journalist at the Chicago Tribune where she covered civil liberties issues in Chicago’s Muslim communities.

“Everyone on the team has brought on incredible analytical skills and critical thinking, which I’ve been blown away by,” Husain said.

Poquette, a junior majoring in policy studies, said she came into the fellowship interested in criminal justice and how the media plays a part in criminalizing certain communities.

“It’s been an amazing experience, everyone is so knowledgeable. They’ve all been able to provide a lot of help, especially since this is my first time writing academic research papers,” Poquette said. “I’m really grateful to be part of the team.”

The team’s talk at Cornell focused on Hamdani’s case and the news coverage surrounding his death. After rushing to the World Trade Center to help those trapped on 9/11, Hamdani was declared missing in the immediate aftermath.

The New York Police Department and the FBI subsequently questioned Hamdani’s family about his previous travel history. That October, the New York Post published an article on Hamdani titled “Missing – or Hiding? – Mystery of NYPD Cadet from Pakistan.”

Athar, another member of the team, said he is doing research work focused on the experience of South Asian communities during the war on terror. The talk at Cornell corresponds heavily to the work he’s doing for the dissertation for his Ph.D., he said.

“We’re going to present some of the research that we’ve been doing together as part of the Lender Center on Hamdani’s case, specifically on some of the ways he was being framed by the media in the aftermath of 9/11,” Athar said. “We’re also going to talk about the larger research we’re doing and how Hamdani’s case connects with the others that we’re working on.”

As the Middle East continues to experience conflicts in areas from Gaza to Yemen, Husain said she believes the work her team is doing is relevant today.

“I think what we see now in mainstream and alternative news outlets is a lot of people trying to analyze the coverage of things like the violence upon Gaza, which has been happening for a while,” Husain said. “The analysis that we’re doing and the things that we’re finding out have a lot to do with the kind of coverage that we’re seeing now, because the war on terror is ongoing, it hasn’t ended.”

The team plans to travel to Chicago over the summer and work with Muslim communities in the area, Husain said. She said one of her main priorities is to preserve the experiences of communities that have been affected by the war on terror.

“We’re planning to host oral history interview workshops in Chicago in June with the help of this grassroots organization called Muslim Counterpublics Lab,” Husain said. “It’s really directed towards the communities in Chicago who have been affected by the war on terror in order to teach them how to tell their own stories, how to interview their family members, their friends and to get those experiences in audio and in writing.”

In the spring of 2025, the team will conclude its work at that year’s Lender Symposium with a presentation of its findings throughout the two years of research..

“We want people to come and understand not just the research and the war on terror, but what people are doing in communities to have counter-narratives,” Husain said. “Those tend to be the things that lead people toward a direction of belief that they can fix it and make it better.”

DISCLAIMER: Olivia Boyer, a member of the research team, is an assistant culture editor for The Daily Orange. She does not influence the editorial content of the News section in her capacity as an assistant culture editor.

Clarification:A previous version of this article stated that the the fellows’ research was in collaboration with Cornell University. The event was held at Cornell, but the research was not conducted in collaboration with Cornell’s research.

Published on March 19, 2024 at 12:01 am