Andrew Crighton
Life Editor
Zackery Heern, professor of history at ISU, specializes in and instructs classes on the Middle East. As part of those classes, his students spearheaded a project he hopes will help present unbiased information to help answer questions about the Middle East and its culture.
In essence, the project is simply facts. Students from several of his classes wrote and submitted facts about the Middle East and then printed them as posters before putting them up around campus.
Rachel Godin is the student organizer and lead of the project. It was coordinated with Heern to serve as part of her honors student project.
“There are so many things that we don’t learn in a regular history class,” Godin said.
That was one reason she took the class in the first place. Godin looked to fulfill her history minor, and thought a class specifically on the Middle East would be interesting.
“Why not learn about something that I don’t know anything about?” Godin said.
This is the first time Heern has done this in his classes, and as such, he is making sure it is done right.
“I’m not trying to pick a fight with anybody,”Heern said. “In light of the events that have happened there was some extra attention that was given to it, and I think rightfully so.”
That extra attention was spent in meetings with the dean and associate dean of the College of Arts and Letters, Kandi Turley-Ames and Mark McBeth as well as Stuart Summers, vice president of marketing and communications.
According to Heern, everyone involved in that meeting was supportive of the project and thought it was part of the solution.
“In class we explore what’s going on, why it’s going on and how different countries in the world interact with the Middle East,” Godin said.
In an attempt to ensure accuracy, the class sent the facts to the entire history department.
Heern spoke about how the history department has made it a goal to go beyond the classroom. Other professors have done things such as pop-up fairs with their students, and this was his solution.
Approximately 260 facts were originally submitted and through several rounds of editing, Godin and her peers narrowed it down to 60.
For varying reasons, some facts were cut. Some were not facts and were simply based on opinion, others could not be verified as easily as would have been liked and some were just too long.
“We live in an age when information is very democratized, which I think is good, but it allows for all sorts of different views to put information out there that may or may not be correct,” Heern said.
According to Heern, this is a very interesting and important project because, “It’s become such an emotionally charged topic.”
If the class and fact posters were about European, Asian or Latin American culture, there would have been no controversy, because no one would have cared, that’s the nature of the subject matter to Heern.
“To me, this is what universities are about; this is a place where we can have these conversations in a safe environment,” Heern said.
