This website attempts to provide sufficient information to encourage a campus wide discussion at Northwestern University as to whether Professor Zdenek Bazant's published work on the fall of the WTC towers on 9/11/01 should be a cause for university wide concern.
As all educated people realize, 9/11 historically will be understood as the primary cause for US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and the beginning of the "war on terror" with its resulting added security measures, considered by many to be a threat to civil liberties. It also led to an atmosphere of suppression of civil dialog for issues surrounding 9/11. It seems every major institution in the US has resisted asking hard questions about this central political event of our time.
Many people, when they see a discussion of 9/11, have chosen to apply the term "conspiracy theory"in a pejorative usage as if no governing body or other powerful group could ever reasonably be accused of abusing their power.
If a society is to remain free, it must be able to have civil dialog about all issues of importance. In the case of 9/11, we should welcome the opportunity to discuss actual evidence, including scientific evidence, rather than resorting to ad hominem attacks in either direction.
Any accusation, conspiracy or not, deserves an investigation into relevant evidence.
We hope the fact that the university has such a policy is indicative of the issue being taken seriously.
Zdenek Bazant's Role
Zdenek Pavel Bazant in 2015
Photo: Royal Society CCbySA 4.0
\\
Professor Bazant has played an important role in the national conversation about the fall of the World Trade Center towers in New York on 9/11.
His first paper on this matter, written with one of his graduate students, was submitted to peer review TWO DAYS after 9/11. While this does not show that he began the paper before 9/11/01, that possibility should be considered.
Timeline For Bazant's Earliest 9/11 Paper:
September 13, 2001 - The original version with Equations 1 and 2 was originally submitted to ASCE.
September 14, 2001 - The preliminary report was posted upon which the Bazant and Zhou (2001) article is based.
September 22, 2001 - An expanded version with Equation 3 was submitted to ASCE.
Between September 28 and October 5, 2001, the appendices were added.
See the paper here: (PDF)
civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/405.pdf
Bazant's pictorial for his "crush down, crush up" scenario of progressive collapse of the World Trade Center towers is shown below.
While it is hard to appreciate this "crush down, crush up" theory and Professor Bazant's insistence that the upper section stays intact until it reaches the bottom, we emphasize that Professor Bazant deserves the right to freedom of speech as much as we do. Therefore, we urge proper collegial decorum with him and his supporters out of respect for the future of this university and educational institutions in general.
However, much evidence has come out over the years due to Freedom of Information Act requests, and the study of the World Trade Center collapses by others. This new evidence SHOULD be especially welcome, but as you will see, this has hardly been the case with Professor Bazant and the ASCE journal (The Journal of Engineering Mechanics) that he has published his papers on the World Trade Center in.
In addition to his September 13th 2001 paper on the collapses Professor Bazant wrote three other papers on the subject, with two other graduate students and two non-civil engineering colleagues. The links to these papers are below.
[2007] (PDF) civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/466.pdf
[2008] (PDF) civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/476.pdf
[2011] (PDF) civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/499.pdf
Research papers which take issue with Professor Bazants theory of the collapses:
(PDF) 911speakout.org/wp-content/uploads/Some-Misunderstandings-Related-to-WTC-Collapse-Analysis.pdf
(PDF) journalof911studies.com/resources/2014SepLetterSzambotiJohns.pdf
(PDF) journalof911studies.com/volume/2010/ChandlerDownwardAccelerationOfWTC1.pdf
(PDF) journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/TheMissingJolt7.pdf
(PDF) journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/NISTandDrBazant-SimultaneousFailure-WTCCollapseAnalysis2.pdf
(PDF) journalof911studies.com/volume/200703/Sudden_collapse_initiation_impossible.pdf
(PDF) journalof911studies.com/resources/2013EastmanColeVol37Apr.pdf
hindawi.com/journals/jstruc/2014/795257/
Earlier it was mentioned that Professor Bazants submission of a research paper on such a complex event, just two days after it occurred, seemed odd in the least. Interestingly, there are other examples involved in this event which can be fully deemed suspicious in their timing.
1. The third building to completely collapse on September 11, 2001 in New York City, WTC7, was reported as having collapsed by both BBC and CNN BEFORE it came down. How would they know? It seems the only mistake was in not realizing that their advanced script indicated foreknowledge of the event
