The nation’s academic elite didn’t have much success fighting the banking-industry bailout. We’ll soon see if they have better luck fighting racism in American politics.

More than 100 scholars have signed a petition organized by Daniel Martin Varisco, chairman of the anthropology department at Hofstra University, protesting “Islamophobia” in the current presidential campaign.

The petition contends that the nomination of Barack Obama by the Democratic Party has brought distortion of a candidate’s religious faith to levels unseen since John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960.

Mr. Obama is a Christian whose late father was raised as a Muslim and later became an atheist. Despite his own deliberate choice of Christianity, Mr. Obama has been accused by some of his opponents of being “a stealth Muslim,” according to the petition, which was signed by a collection of college professors and doctoral students, many involved in studying Islam and Muslim societies. The petition also condemns incidents that include the distribution in some key swing states of a film that equates Islam with Nazism.

“Regardless of your final choice for the voting booth on Nov. 4,” the petition said, “the decision should be based on the crucial issues facing the nation and the individual character of each candidate rather than spurious hate speech that demonizes the faith of some 8-million citizens of the United States and more than a billion adherents worldwide.”

Mr. Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, has faced such questions from his own supporters. “I can’t trust Obama,” one woman told Mr. McCain last Friday at a campaign rally in Minnesota. “I have read about him, and he’s not, he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

Mr. McCain shook his head and told the woman: “No, ma’am, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man, a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not.”