It’s the middle of the night, and news is breaking around the globe as most of Bloomington-Normal sleeps. A mild-mannered professor from Illinois State University is often awake in these quiet hours. There’s a 12-hour time difference between Bangladesh and Bloomington-Normal, so Dr. Ali Riaz often finds himself monitoring events in his home country deep into the night. The Distinguished Professor in Illinois State’s Department of Politics and Government is a scholar of South Asian politics, especially the political landscape in his native land. Last August, an uprising led mostly by students rejecting the government’s turn to full-blown autocracy caused Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to leave the country after 15 years in office. An interim government, le...