The Azerbaijani novelist and literary critic Chingiz Huseynov (or Guseinov), who teaches at Moscow State University, cautioned in 2004 against being "driven by 'ethno-emotions' that may compel us to tie this piece to Azerbaijani literature at any cost." Renowned Azerbaijani poet, mathematician, and founder of Baku’s Khazar University Hamlet Isakhanli oglu Isayev has also spoken out against nationalistic motivations in the campaign for Chamanzaminli's authorship. "I think that appealing to the Azerbaijanis' sense of national pride by trying to prove that Chamanzaminli wrote the novel is counterproductive. ... As an Azerbaijani I don’t feel any more proud because an ethnic Azeri supposedly wrote the novel." Another commentator is Alison Mandaville, a professor of literature at California State University, Fresno who has translated fiction from Azerbaijani to English and has published extensively on Azerbaijani literature and culture. Alison Mandaville's articles on Azerbaijani literature and culture include "Mullahs to Donkeys: Cartooning in Azerbaijan." For Mandaville, "Azerbaijan International"'s attempt to establish Chamanzaminli's authorship of "Ali and Nino" reflects a narrow sense of literature as a form of "property" that detracts from the appreciation and promotion of literature itself and reflects a contemporary sense of communalist Azeri nationalism that is divorced from the multicultural nationalism reflected in the novel. "This controversy reads like a view of literature as property – political, national property … as if the most important thing is not the literature itself, but who gets to 'own' it. In my opinion, Azerbaijan would be much better served by supporting and promoting literature itself, rather than getting into ‘whose’ it is. For anyone that reads today, literature is global. And anyone doing research on origins of literature during the "Ali and Nino" period knows that nation was a highly fluid thing at that point in history."