I don't mean to. But Chapel Hill is no longer a university town so much as a town with a university, and I suspect the same is true for Madison, Ann Arbor and all the others. The difference reflects the changing role of the university in American life. The culture wars have had their impact. Victories have been scored on both sides.
Campuses are still among the most diverse and democratically vibrant places in the country.
But they're not quite setting the tone for change or providing the nation with any sort of collective moral compass. Universities were once their own reason for being, the sort of institutions that shaped their environment according to the caliber of graduates they produced and the vision they endowed them with. Aside from the hard sciences, which are thriving on piles of Nobels, this is not an age of intellectual innovation in the social sciences and the humanities. Students' disillusionment with politics may have something to do with that dearth of new ideas. They still want to be revolutionaries, but not by wasting time on idealistic dead-ends.