“I’m much less concerned about how people react to me”

That was part of Rebecca Tuvel’s answer to a question from journalist Evan Goldstein about “the benefits of almost getting canceled.” [Annie Vought, “Demeter” (detail)]Professor Tuvel (Rhodes College) was interviewed recently by Goldstein for the Chronicle of Higher Education. It was nine years ago, readers may recall, that the publication of Tuvel’s “In Defense of Transracialism” in the journal Hypatia ignited a firestorm of online outrage. You can read all about that episode here. (As Goldstein notes, the affair was recently mentioned in the “Vanderbilt Report” on the humanities.) Dr. Tuvel says she learned of the controversy via an email she read while in a Target parking lot. She says: I had a really intense reaction. I learned after the fact that I effectively went into a hypomanic state for about four days. I was obsessively reading every single thing on the internet. I was totally beside myself, wondering if I was a horrible person. I had always been a people pleaser. This…