When 5,600 new students from all corners of our state and beyond gathered in the Smith Center for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s annual convocation to start the academic year, they had a lot on their minds. Many are living away from home and family for the first time and figuring out laundry and bus schedules. Some are questioning if they’ve chosen the right major. And nearly all will be wondering if these experiences are unique to them or just a rite of passage.

Last fall, having drunk deeply of the Left’s cocktail of antisemitism, post-colonialism, and general nuisance-making, a small but virulent minority of American college students began “protesting” for “Palestine.” Inaugurated mere days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 sneak-attack against Israel, these agitations crescendoed with the establishment, in the spring of this year, of “Occupy Wall Street”-style encampments on university quads.

There has been much concern in recent years about the rise of nontraditional college leaders and what that portends for higher education. The announcement last week of Lee Roberts as chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill kicked off a fresh round of debate about whether someone from outside academe can be effective at the helm of a university.