I sat down with historian James Hankins, who recently resigned from Harvard after 40 years, to discuss why academia abandoned Western civilization, the institutional mechanisms that silence dissent, and how we can embrace the Western roots of America in the 21st century.
We get into:
Why he left Harvard and joined the Hamilton School in Florida
How fear of student backlash silences even tenured professors
What happened to Harvard’s commitment to Western civilization
Why teaching “global history” misses the point of education
The link between Christianity, liberalism, and capitalism
The classical education movement as antidote to institutional rot
Why America needs to reclaim its Western heritage
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Follow James Hankins on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/JamesWHankins1?s=20
Read James’s Harvard resignation article: https://www.compactmag.com/article/why-im-leaving-harvard/
Order a copy of “The Golden Thread”: https://a.co/d/06ypgCWv
Outline:
[0:00] Why he left Harvard after 40 years
[7:51] The decline of elite higher education
[18:12] The big lie about Western Civilization
[25:27] Global history vs. narrative history
[42:04] Does history help us predict the future?
[49:45] What is Western Civilization?
[1:01:23] Islamic conquest and the Dark Ages
[1:05:20] The origins of liberalism
[1:19:07] How did the Church enforce canon law?
[1:24:42] The evolution of usury laws
[1:33:19] America’s role in Western Civilization
[1:39:45] The French Revolution’s societal self-hatred
[1:47:30] The Radicalism of the American Revolution
[1:54:04] Do Catholics belong in America?
[2:01:20] Is the “Protestant work ethic” real?
[2:07:32] What to prioritize when educating your kids
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