This paper examines the neoconservative critique of the university and particularly the attack on multiculturalism and postmodernism that initiated the culture wars. It seeks to explain these developments by an analysis of the thought of Leo Strauss. The paper begins by providing an introduction to US neoconservatism and latest challenges to it from within signaling its end before reviewing the roles of Allan Bloom and Lynne Cheney in the neoconservative rewriting of history and the humanities which finds its source in Strauss' critique of radical historicism. (Contains 35 notes.)