Commentary Twenty-five years ago, I heard for the first time of a fact that in the last few years has become a central feature in American life. A few months before, I had left academia to work as a low-level political appointment at the National Endowment for the Arts in the Bush administration. I hadn’t been away from academia for any of my adult life, never working anywhere off-campus except for short-term, part-time jobs during graduate school to grab enough money to cover the rent. Now, I was in DC, a whole other atmosphere, where being a scholar or an intellectual or researcher had a different meaning. In academia, in my area of the humanities, what mattered was how smart you are, how up-to-date on the latest theories, plus a wary respect for political correctness. Show that you are au courant and bien pensant, and do so with a little …