1984: In the Culture Wars, a Volley at Higher Education

As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William J. Bennett felt moved to issue a 42-page report ripping into the state of those disciplines and urging colleges to “revitalize teaching of the humanities,” The Chronicle reported. “Many academic leaders lack the confidence to assert that the curriculum should stand for something more than salesmanship, compromise, or special-interest politics,” he wrote. A few months later, Mr. Bennett became U.S. secretary of education. In other front-page news, we described Amherst College’s painful prohibition on fraternity activities. Thirty years later, Amherst banned off-campus Greek groups entirely.