In their sophomore years, 35 members of the Class of 2005 became religion concentrators, more than twice the number of concentrators in the classes before and after it. Some have attributed the spike to Sept. 11, and how it has heightened awareness of tensions between the Muslim and Christian worlds.

Matthew A.B. Siegler ’05 says Sept. 11 was the deciding factor behind his desire to concentrate in religion.

“9/11 affected my decision in a major way,” he says. “The new national consciousness about religion as motivation for the attacks was a major part of it for me.”

Like the committee on religion, the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (NELC) grew more popular in the wake of the attacks. NELC has nine concentrators in the Class of 2005. This is a notable increase from past years for a concentration that usually attracts only joint-concentrators and graduate students, according to William E. Granara, professor of the practice of Arabic on the Gordon Gray Endowment.

Three of these seniors, he says, have taken four years of Arabic, an unprecedented number given that the concentration, which includes Arabic, Islamic, Jewish, Turkish, and Persian studies, only requires two years of a primary language.

The growth in NELC enrollment can be attributed to the popularity of Arabic classes that swelled in the months and years after Sept. 11. A year after the attacks, enrollment in introductory Arabic nearly doubled. According to the Registrar, 74 students enrolled in Arabic A, an introductory language course, in the fall of 2002, while 36 and 41 had enrolled respectively in the previous two years. Since then, enrollment numbers have remained high.

Thomas I.D. Odell ’04-’05 took his first Arabic class on Sept. 12, 2001 and he calls the attacks “quite a backdrop” for the beginning of his studies. The summer before the attacks, Odell decided to concentrate in NELC instead of American history, a decision he says his friends did not understand.

“Before 9/11...people would say ‘why do you want to do that?’” he says. “After Sept. 11 everyone would say ‘Oh that’s so relevant.’ They say relevant like it’s suddenly fascinating.”

This reception bothered Odell at first because his preexisting interest was not strictly military or political. But he quickly became interested in current events, he says, and it all did begin to feel relevant.

Odell doesn’t know where his study of Arabic will lead him, though journalism is one career path he is considering.

THE REAL WORLD

Kyle E. Scherer ’05, a Lenapi Native American, says that Sept. 11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made him think harder about his future career and patriotism.

“The events of Sept. 11 almost made me question the path that I was going on,” says Scherer, who joined the army reserves and will work in a Cambridge-based military intelligence unit after graduation.

Scherer, a special concentrator in “American Public Policy and American Indian Politics,” says he studied colonialism from the perspective of the colonized.