True Cross-Cultural Connections Take Place on Campuses That Welcome People From Around the World
by Daniela Gerson September 3, 2026 (ZocaloPublicSquare.org)
As students return to colleges across the country, two are missing at Brown University: Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Dual victims of a campus shooting in December, they appeared to share little beyond a rigorous work ethic. Ella, a sophomore from Alabama, was vice president of the campus Republican club. MukhammadAziz, an Uzbek immigrant who grew up in Virginia, was an aspiring neurosurgeon. Both were studying in a lecture hall on a Saturday afternoon when a gunman entered and started firing.
Many reflecting on Ella’s and MukhammadAziz’s murders focused on the travesty of gun violence. But their senseless deaths should not be the only joint legacy of these students. That these two young people ever shared a room was remarkable and should be preserved as a critical reminder of what diversity, in its truest form, can contribute to U.S. university life.
I often witness potent exchanges as young people of different backgrounds connect in study and leisure at California State University, Northridge, where I’m an associate professor. I know the lasting and transformative impact of such cross-cultural connections personally. Another Uzbek student at Brown changed my own life decades ago.
My sophomore spring, I arrived at the media lab to edit a video on the concept of faith, and why my grandmother lost her belief in God after surviving the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. The student worker that day was Sherzod Akbarov. As the young man with an accent and exceptionally warm Turkic eyes taught me how to edit video, I asked him where he was from. “Uzbekistan,” he said.
Hearing that far-off place shocked and thrilled me. Ever since I could remember, Uzbekistan had been somewhere I could not quite locate on a map, but that held mythical weight for me. I knew my father was born a refugee there near the Silk Road city of Samarkand as World War II came to an end. He had departed in his parents’ arms at 6 months old and had no memories of his birthplace. Growing up in Washington, D.C., I’d never met anyone from Uzbekistan. That is, until I met Sherzod, who had lived in the capital city of Tashkent until receiving a scholarship to come to Rhode Island.
Soon our relationship took on a rhythm. I’d come to the media lab to edit the video but was more interested in Sherzod. I never tired of asking him questions about Uzbekistan. He confirmed my grandmother’s memories of delectable melons and grapes, regaling me with stories of exceptional markets and fruits, instilling a contemporary, almost tangible, connection to this ephemeral place.
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Two years later, Sherzod and I both enrolled in a senior seminar on post-Soviet states, co-taught by former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s son, Sergei. We sat together sometimes, along with friends of Norwegian and Japanese backgrounds. For my term paper, I researched Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s repressive leader, reading books and news articles on the then-nascent internet. But the real education came after class, when the story came alive in conversations with Sherzod during his media lab shifts. I wanted to understand: Why was Islam Karimov, himself of Muslim background, cracking down on some Muslim residents? Was it frightening to live in an authoritarian state? Or more reassuring to feel a society was under control? Patiently, Sherzod shared what he knew of his country’s politics, the transition from communism and principles of a secular state. What could have been a dry lecture came to life with stories of how languages changed and schoolbooks transformed under shifting ideologies.
After college, Sherzod and I went our separate ways. That could have been the end of this diversity experience. But for me, our connection had sparked an intrigue with the farthest destination in my family’s refugee journey—Uzbekistan.
Decades later, kicking off research for a book about how my family and hundreds of thousands of Jews along with them survived World War II in Uzbekistan, I sent Sherzod, who was back in Tashkent, a message on Facebook: “Happy Birthday Sherzod! Long, long time. Have you ever heard of a place called Djuma (outside of Samarkand)?” I had discovered that was the name of my father’s birthplace—not Samarkand as I had always believed. Right away, he responded that it was a small agricultural town and offered to help me figure out how to get there.
Almost a year later, I touched down in Tashkent, the first in my family to enter Uzbekistan in seven decades. And then I reunited with Sherzod, who had built a career in international business development, at a local Korean restaurant. It was as if time had not passed. We ate slippery noodles and carrot salad. Sherzod patiently explained to me the nuances of Uzbek history and the country’s evolving relationship with Moscow. I had spoken with ambassadors and professors, but here I felt at ease, that I could ask Sherzod questions without fearing judgment. And Sherzod added details that made Uzbekistan feel less foreign and more relatable, like recollections of standing in Victory Day parades for his own grandfather, who had fought in the military.
But it was not all about war and its legacy. Sherzod also told me about a bright green soda of his youth that we needed to try. About his gym routine and the best place for the national dish of plov. And I shared with him thoughts on how best to get his daughter an education in the United States, like his. That encounter in the media lab continued to ripple, guiding me eventually to the book I would write melding history and the personal.
On college campuses today opportunities for students to engage in invaluable relationships like Sherzod’s and mine are on the decline. The Trump administration has attempted to shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, accusing them of excluding white students, rather than enriching their university experience. In addition, admissions of international students like Sherzod are down, due in large part to visa restrictions. It’s true that Ella and MukhammadAziz’s killer entered the U.S. as a foreign student from Portugal and later returned with permanent status on a diversity lottery visa for immigrants from underrepresented countries that the Trump administration suspended after the shootings. But one deranged assassin is not a rational reason to shut down the program, nor limit international students, when native-born Americans commit more than 85% of mass killings.
Meanwhile, the concept of diversity, whether lionized or demonized, is often miscategorized. It has evolved into a catchall for underrepresented communities, which are often not diverse at all. When I was a graduate student at the University of Southern California, immigration demographer Dowell Myers asked my class a simple question: What is the least diverse community in Los Angeles? Hands shot up. Students shouted out affluent, primarily white enclaves such as Malibu and Beverly Hills. But demographically, L.A.’s least diverse—that is, most homogenous—communities are actually the ones most often labeled “diverse,” like East L.A., which is almost all Latino.
Diversity at its core means a mixture, not simply bringing in underrepresented groups. And it can benefit all students. How many fellow students would Ella and MukhammadAziz have impacted if they’d been able to return to campus this year and next? Whose narratives would they have complicated? What windows of understanding would they have opened? We will never know.
Daniela Gerson is an associate professor of journalism at California State University, Northridge, and an editor-at-large at Zócalo Public Square. She is the author of The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II.
Primary editor: Eryn Brown | Secondary editor: Sarah Rothbard