The short answer is that it has mostly disappeared, due to the takeover of American higher education by people who despise it.

So argues NR’s Stanley Kurtz in a recent book entitled The Lost History of Western Civilization. Robert Paquette, one historian who laments the way his fellow academics have treated Western Civ, writes about that book for the Martin Center.

Paquette, professor of History at Hamilton College, says of the book:

Kurtz’s potent and well-written diagnosis does go a long way toward identifying the more prominent “scholarly” culprits responsible for what can only be described as a great betrayal of the ethos of liberal arts education. As the folks behind the 1619 Project at The New York Times understand all too well, the deposits of wisdom that form the foundation of a civic culture necessary to sustain a free society cannot be defended if they are not taught or taught only in politicized caricature.

Exactly. The “progressives” promoting this caricature of America (if they’re teaching it at all) want young people to hear only bad things about our history and culture. At most colleges and universities, they hold power over the curriculum.

And those academics have groomed a zealous cadre of students who are happy to protest any deviationism from ideological purity.

What has this done to higher education? Paquette answers:

Think of it — a $70,000 per year education in which many students have to censor themselves to survive. In such a world, Columbus deserves damnation as a genocidal maniac; Thomas Jefferson stands convicted of pedophilia; and the search for common ground entails special events from which conservatives are consciously excluded.