Last month, the online trial of Richard Hanania provided an odd lesson in the politics of cancellation. The prominent commentator and academic had, the Huffington Post revealed, made disturbingly racist and sexist comments in the years around 2010, writing for far-right websites under a pseudonym. Hanania soon posted a well-written blog entry about how his views had evolved in a classical-liberal direction and survived the scandal. Then he bragged about how the affair had boosted his forthcoming book’s presales.

The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics; By Richard Hanania; Broadside Books; 288 pp., $32.00

That book, The Origins of Woke — an argument for weakening civil rights law — indeed is being published as planned by Broadside, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins. How this happened without any outward signs of revolt from, well, woke staffers at the company is anyone’s guess.