/Older readers know how the leading American universities, which had risen to world-class status by the 1930s and 1940s, were upended by the traumatic campus events of the late 1960s and their aftermath. Riots and boycotts by student radicals, the decline in core curriculum requirements, the loss of nerve by university presidents and administrators, galloping grade inflation, together with the influence on research and learning of such radical campus ideological fads as Marxism, deconstructionism, and radical feminism all contributed to the declining quality of America's best institutions from what they had been in the middle years of the 20th century. /

Er, what? I'm not following any of the author's points here. The introductory paragraphs read as a barely coherent rant against every major event that's occurred on university campuses since the 1950s. While I agree that not everything has been to the benefit of academics, I definitely disagree with the author's point that American universities reached their peak prior to World War 2. Pre-war, there were institutions in Europe and Britain that could match American universities; post-war, American universities were far ahead of the rest.