Enrollment in classes about the Middle East and Islam has climbed to unprecedented levels across the nation in the wake of Sept. 11.
At Dartmouth, 21 students enrolled in Introductory Arabic this fall, as opposed to 12 last year and six the year before.
Professor Dennis Washburn told The Dartmouth earlier this term that this enrollment was the largest he had seen at Dartmouth.
Fifty-four students have enrolled in Religion 16: Modern Islam this fall, whereas only eleven took the course last winter.
Enrollment in courses like History 5: Introduction to the Islamic World, has also risen from 49 from 30 the last time the course was offered. History 96, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, has also increased, although less dramatically.
Ronald Green, the chair of the religion department, anticipates that enrollment in courses pertaining to Islam and fundamentalism will continue to remain high should the war in Afghanistan continue.
Dartmouth students chose their courses in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and their Fall term selections reflected the post-Sept. 11 environment.
At other colleges, many of which had already been in session for several weeks on Sept. 11, students had already made final decisions about their course loads.
However many schools, including Harvard University, Princeton University and Stanford University, have already seen the same trend that has manifested itself at Dartmouth this year.
At Stanford, enrollment in Introduction to International Relations jumped from 220 students last year to 357 this year, according to The Stanford Daily.
Michael Tomz, the instructor of the course, told the Daily that the teaching staff had to be doubled to accommodate the increased enrollment.
Enrollment in introductory Arabic at Stanford was similarly high. While the course normally only attracts a handful of students, over 30 signed up this year.
At Princeton, some courses saw similar jumps in enrollment: a class at the Woodrow Wilson School on international diplomacy nearly doubled.
Other Princeton professors indicated plans to revise their course syllabi to spend time talking about current events.
Christopher Wren, who teaches a course called Politics and the Media: Covering International Intrigue, told The Daily Princetonian that he had originally planned to discuss terrorism the fourth or fifth week of the semester but found himself compelled to change the schedule after Sept. 11.
Princeton professors teaching Near Eastern Studies 201: Introduction to the Middle East and Sociology 250: The Western Way of War also planned to incorporate additional reading relating to the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the Daily Princetonian.
Enrollment in Harvard's Foreign Cultures 17: Thought and Change in the Contemporary Middle East also rose sharply after Sept. 11.
At Dartmouth, curricula of some survey courses, which do not focus primarily on the Middle East, have also shifted to reflect student interest in current events.
For example, students in Government 4, the introductory comparative politics course, have spent several class sessions analyzing the events of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan.
Similarly, Green said that the syllabus of Religion 1, an introductory course that surveys the major world religions, will be changed to include additional information about Islam and a new unit called "Religion and Modernity."