Sstrhsrtj

I am trying to edit a latex template and /textit{} doesnt seem to work. The packages I have imported look like

documentclass[letterpaper]{article}

usepackage[letterpaper,margin=1.25in,noheadfoot]{geometry}

usepackage[normalem]{ulem}

defbibsection{section*{References}}

usepackage{fontspec, color, enumerate, sectsty}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

%                      YOUR INFORMATION

%

%      PLEASE EDIT THE FOLLOWING LINES ACCORDINGLY!!

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

newcommand{soptitle}{Statement of Purpose}

newcommand{yourname}{Gautam Jain}

newcommand{youremail}{Masters in Computational Data Science}



%% FONTS SETUP

defaultfontfeatures{Mapping=tex-text}

setmonofont[Path = fonts/, Scale=0.8]{monaco}

setsansfont[Path = fonts/, Scale=0.9]{Optima-Regular}

setromanfont[Path = fonts/, Ligatures={Common}]{adobe_caslon_pro}

newcommand{amper}{{fontspec[Scale=.95]{Adobe Caslon 

Pro}selectfontitshape&~{}}}

usepackage[bookmarks, colorlinks, breaklinks,

pdftitle={yourname - soptitle},pdfauthor={yourname}, unicode]{hyperref}

hypersetup{linkcolor=magneta,citecolor=magenta,filecolor=magenta,urlcolor= 

[named]{WildStrawberry}}

I have a suspicion the adobe_caslon_pro is impeding it. Can anyone give me pointers on how to resolve it.