Entrenched special interests. Inflexible ideologues. Influence peddling. Bloated bureaucracies. These maladies, at first glance, seem to depict life inside the Washington beltway. Readers of NRO know, due to its excellent blog Phi Beta Cons, that these ailments also afflict large swaths of American higher education. But just as both presidential candidates this year promise to challenge the status quo in our nation's capital, a dedicated core of professors and administrators has worked tirelessly to reform academic life on our college campuses. They have sought to return the American university to its original purpose: liberal education, not ideological indoctrination. They have challenged the political correctness that asphyxiates intellectual inquiry in academia. Progress has been made, yet much work remains.