At the risk of making enemies and offending the original poster:
Do you KNOW your professor? Do you two chat? Are you friends? Do you have an “open dialog”? Something about you “discovering” is nationality from a “readily available CV” (is it posted in the lecture hall with the words “I’m originally from Iran” underlined?) suggest otherwise. I would advise you to save your condolences/well-wishing.
There are a number of conflicts going on all over the world with deaths in the thousands and tens of thousands and yet, you don't seem to be doing background checks on your other professors/faculty/classmates and preparing carefully worded sympathy statements for them.
You are singling your professor out because of his (original) nationality. It doesn’t matter that you’re singling him out for sympathy, it’s the basis of your sympathy:his nationality and not say…friendship or genuine concern, which is the problem.
Rather than appreciating your “concern” (although he could indeed), I think your well-meaning comments are more likely to worry your professor about what you might think or say or do if Iran were to suddenly enter into a conflict with the United States. Would you then seek him out and ask for an explanation?
I have to thank Shot From Guns for his comments, because they are so pithy here. As a dark-skinned American, I’m constantly subject to pats on the back, thumbs up, and all manner of illogical congratulation on Obama’s election. Does it put a grin on my face and a spring in my step? NO. These are the same people who will be shooting me dirty looks the next time some dark-skinned criminal at large is posted up on television.
You see, it works both ways. Extrapolation from the individual to the group, assuming the individual is intimately related to, privy to, or somehow in control of the actions of a group to which he may or may not be related are all different flavours of the same erroneous reasoning that lead to and perpetuate stereotypes and discrimination, and it doesn’t matter whether your mindset is sympathy, praise, hatred or whatever.
So just keep it to yourself. Sorry, but I believe deep down this is more about you and your worries and concerns than about genuine concern for your professor.
In case none of that sunk in, I’ll give an example from my life. I met a man a few weeks ago who’s arms were severed just above the elbow in an accident when he was young. Did I immediately offer my deepest condolences and perhaps some pocket change? No, I decided to reserve my possibly unwarranted sympathy until I knew more about him than what was “readily available”.
It turns out he is a very successful calligrapher, as well as an athlete who had set records in the special Olympics, and owns three more houses than I do (I own zero houses). So it turns out that he had absolutely no need for my sympathy and rather I, being fully armed and yet not nearly as successful, might be instead deserving of his.
You see, no matter how well meaning I might have possibly been, if I had simply seen his lack of arms and expressed my “genuine condolences”, this gentleman could only possibly see it as condescending and insincere, because my feelings would be based solely on what I could see, and not genuine concern or understanding for his situation. My feelings would be more about myself and how I feel about differently-abled people than about his specific situation.
