An op-ed published by the Washington Examiner is accusing Fairfax County Public Schools of sanitizing its 9/11 curriculum by teaching students everything about the attacks except who carried them out and why. The piece, written by Eric Rozenman, who retired in 2024 as communications consultant for the Washington-based Jewish Policy Center, was posted Saturday by the Daily Examiner account @dcexaminer under the headline: "They're teaching everything about 9/11 except who did it and why."
Rozenman's op-ed argues that the Virginia school district's instructional materials omit any reference to Islamic extremism or the motives of the perpetrators behind the September 11, 2001 attacks. The piece frames the curriculum as historically incomplete, saying students are given the events of the day without the context of who planned and executed them.
The argument was quickly picked up by conservative outlets. Within roughly an hour of the Daily Examiner post, according to the coverage reviewed by Next News Network, the claim had spread across accounts and aggregators describing the curriculum as hiding "Islamic extremism and perpetrator motives" from students. The coverage characterized Rozenman's criticism as a broader indictment of how American schools approach 9/11 education.
At the center of the dispute is what Fairfax County Public Schools actually teaches about the attacks. According to the op-ed's claims as relayed by the Daily Examiner, the district's curriculum materials discuss the timeline, the victims, the first responders, and the aftermath without identifying the attackers or their ideological motivation. Rozenman, a longtime communications professional who worked for the Jewish Policy Center, argues that this framing leaves students without the ability to understand why the attacks happened.
The piece lands amid a broader national debate over how schools teach sensitive historical subjects, including terrorism, religious extremism, and the causes of politically motivated violence. Conservative commentators have repeatedly raised concerns that public school curricula downplay or omit uncomfortable facts about the perpetrators of high-profile attacks. The 9/11 anniversary each September has become a recurring flashpoint in that debate.
"They're teaching everything about 9/11 except who did it and why," the Daily Examiner post reads, summarizing the central claim of Rozenman's op-ed. The post does not include the full text of the piece, but the headline captures the thrust of the argument: that factual details about the perpetrators have been stripped from the lesson.
Other coverage of the same subject, published around the same time, used similar language. One write-up described the situation this way: Fairfax County Public Schools "sanitizes 9/11 history by hiding Islamic extremism and perpetrator motives from its curriculum." That framing has been carried across multiple conservative accounts and media properties, turning a single op-ed into a broader talking point.
For readers unfamiliar with the background: the September 11, 2001 attacks were carried out by nineteen hijackers affiliated with al-Qaeda, the Islamist terrorist organization then led by Osama bin Laden. The attacks killed nearly three thousand people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. How American schools teach that history -- and how much they say about the perpetrators' ideology -- has been contested for years.
Rozenman's background places him in the middle of that debate. He retired in 2024 after years as communications consultant for the Jewish Policy Center, a Washington-based organization. His op-ed, as carried by the Daily Examiner, argues that the omissions in Fairfax County's curriculum represent a distortion of the historical record, not merely a matter of instructional emphasis.
Fairfax County Public Schools, one of the largest districts in Virginia, has not issued a public response to the op-ed reviewed by Next News Network. It is not yet known whether the district has reviewed the specific claims about its curriculum materials, or whether any changes are being considered.
What is clear from the coverage is that the op-ed has moved beyond a single publication. The Daily Examiner post, dated Saturday, was followed within roughly an hour by additional coverage carrying the same core allegation. The claim has since been repeated by conservative outlets and social media accounts describing the curriculum as deliberately hiding the identity and motives of the perpetrators.
Next News Network could not independently verify the claim that Fairfax County Public Schools' curriculum omits the identity or motives of the 9/11 perpetrators.
The broader significance, according to the accounts amplifying the op-ed, is that the dispute reflects a pattern. Conservative commentators argue that public schools have increasingly avoided teaching uncomfortable facts about Islamic extremism, leaving students with a partial picture of the attacks. The op-ed's headline has become a shorthand for that argument.
The debate over 9/11 education is not new. In the years since the attacks, school districts across the country have revised their instructional materials, in some cases emphasizing the victims and first responders while giving less attention to the perpetrators' ideology. Critics of those revisions argue that omitting the "who" and "why" makes the attacks appear random or unexplained. Supporters of such revisions argue that the focus should remain on the victims and the national response.
Rozenman's op-ed falls squarely on the critics' side. By asking why schools teach everything except who did it and why, the piece challenges districts to justify their framing. Whether Fairfax County Public Schools will respond -- and whether other districts will face similar scrutiny -- is not yet known.
For now, the op-ed and the coverage around it have turned a local curriculum question into a national talking point. The accounts carrying it are conservative outlets and commentators, and the language they use is consistent: sanitized history, hidden motives, omitted perpetrators. Whether that framing holds up against the actual curriculum materials is a separate question, one that the public record reviewed by Next News Network does not resolve.
The op-ed's author, Eric Rozenman, is identified in the Daily Examiner post as having retired in 2024 as communications consultant for the Washington-based Jewish Policy Center. The piece is an opinion column, not a news report, and represents Rozenman's views as stated in his capacity as the author of the piece.
Our Take
If the claim holds up, Fairfax County schools have some explaining to do. Teaching students about 9/11 without telling them who carried it out and why is not education -- it is sanitization dressed up as sensitivity. The perpetrators of the September 11 attacks were Islamic extremists acting on a declared ideology. That is a fact, not a viewpoint. Students cannot understand the attacks, the war on terror that followed, or the world they inherit without it. The district should either produce the evidence that it teaches these facts, or fix the curriculum. Parents deserve to know what their children are actually being taught -- and what they are not.
