Today's dominant strain of American leftist thought is multiculturalist, not nationalist, which means leftist identity politics is mostly a matter of trying to forge alliances among disparate and potentially antipathetic ethnic and other identity groups.
All professors experience the vagaries of school administrations, competitive or antipathetic colleagues, the inexplicable thought processes of grant committees, the threat of a career permanently derailed by strangers, and the occasional helicopter parent and self-entitled student.