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Sources report that Professor Eller Van Heinz asked for ethnic student Zahra Bakhtiyar’s take “as someone from that part of the world.”
“He asked if my family was from Azerbaijan,” Zahra said, recounting how her professor assumed that her heritage made her an expert on the region. “Then he said, ‘I’d love to hear your thoughts about Putin’s recent aggressions, as someone from that part of the world.’”
“I was like ‘uh, I mean, it’s not good,’” Zahra said, describing how she didn’t really know how else to qualify the situation, since she grew up in Michigan. “I get the feeling I was supposed to say something more detailed though.”
“I’ve only been there a couple summers to see my great-uncle, so I don’t really…” Zahra explained with a shrug, feeling like she had let the class down, even though her professor was supposed to be the expert on the Caucus regions. “Maybe I should’ve read up more?”
At press time, the professor was asking a Black student to explain systemic racism to the class.
