Ruslan, a student I taught in the summer of 2016 in Lviv, Ukraine was fascinated by the Transformers. He wore the symbol of the heroic protagonists, the Autobots, on a t-shirt to class. As a fellow geek myself, I wanted to encourage him to speak up, and asked, “Your parents lived in Ukraine through the Cold War. What distinguished your life from theirs in the USSR?” Ruslan paused. He was taken aback. Not because he didn’t have an answer. He replied, “No professor in university has ever made me feel like my voice matters.” I asked him why he thought this. “Because our professors still have a So…