Right before Thanksgiving, social media’s latest viral star was born: a Cambridge academic named Ally Louks, who posted a photo of herself on X posing with her successful dissertation only to generate hundreds of thousands of comments mocking her work due to its title, “Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose.” Having not read her opus, neither I nor the vast majority of commenters are in a position to judge its merit, but the text itself is really beside the point of why so many people were nonetheless primed to erupt so vehemently. Popular perceptions of academics at prestigious institutions, of the things they study and the ways they write and the politics they hold, are deeply divided for a reason. People reacting to Louks were really reacting to whatever earlier experiences they’ve had with other academics holding preposterous beliefs alongside overweening confidence that they’re the sort of meritocrats who know how to reorder society and deserve the right to rule over others.