Since retiring from the university, several people have asked if I miss it. I tell them I miss what it was, but not what it has become. Higher education in America has gone from being the best in the world to one of the most pathetic. Why? It’s hard to describe what academia was to me and to millions in the past. It was not just a job, but a way of life, and of Western Civilization; and I’m so close to it, that it’s hard to describe—like trying to describe one’s own mother (hence alma mater!).

A recent story on UNC Chapel Hill’s pioneering new School of Civic Life and Leadership by The Assembly, a left-leaning online magazine, missed an opportunity to explain to its readers what the program teaches, what students learn and what those students think about it.

Instead of illuminating the pro-democracy program’s academic content, The Assembly’s 3,000-plus-word story followed the lead of other news media in obsessing over process, impugning participants’ motives and highlighting the school’s origins — while getting that wrong.

You may have noticed that there has been less news this fall than last spring about Middle East-related demonstrations and disruptions on college campuses, a change only partly attributable to the recent presidential election.