Dr. Meena Bose, 34, is an assistant poli sci prof at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a frequent pundit on American politics (thanks, Ennis). I’ve seen her on TV discussing the presidential election. She comes across as earnest, fair, wonkish yet accessible. She’s clearly intelligent, clearly high-bandwidth. But she lacks some of the swagger you need to hold your own on a panel of pundits or with decorated military men. It’ll probably come with age.

She is a petite woman in a pageboy haircut who looks barely out of her teens… Her expertise and evenhandedness have made her an increasingly sought-after television pundit, most recently for “The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.” Ms. Bose is one of the few female scholars… asked to provide historical context for American politics.

But Ms. Bose, whose heritage is Bengali Indian, touts neither a feminist nor immigrant American viewpoint… Her father, Nirmal, is an electrical engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University, where Ms. Bose was an undergraduate, and her mother, Chandra, formerly history instructor in New Delhi.

Bose earned her doctorate from Princeton and wrote Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy.