MICRO BREWS, NOT MICRO AGGRESSIONS:

[M]any Dartmouth professors and other campus activists are enraged that Mr. Hanlon refused their main ultimatums to suppress free expression in the name of identity politics and especially to dismantle the college's fraternity and sorority system. Outside of football, no other American institution enjoys so much elite disdain but widespread popular approval as college fraternities, and Mr. Hanlon might have become an overnight media-academic celebrity had he nuked Frat Row amid the current political agitation.

Instead, Mr. Hanlon, a former University of Michigan provost, observed that all U.S. colleges struggle with misconduct, regardless of their particular social scene. The solution is to require accountability and to expect virtues such as civility and self-control. "True and lasting change will not come from top-down policies alone," he said in a speech to the student body. "It will come from individuals and organizations committing to live up to a higher standard of behavior."

This is another way of describing the character education and moral instruction that academia abdicated in the 1960s and '70s, and it is a refreshing turn given the sensibilities of modern higher education. Mr. Hanlon ended his address with a subversive call for faculty members to join this project, namely by strengthening academic rigor and "curbing grade inflation."

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