Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ

RealClearPolitics ^ | December 30, 2025 | Daniel McCarthy

[MinorityRepublican]

At Harvard University today, professors who teach Western history are history.

James Hankins, a specialist in Renaissance thought, was one of the last holdouts.

Now Hankins, who has just published a hefty book that teaches what Harvard doesn't -- "The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. Vol. 1" -- has decamped for the University of Florida's Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education.

It's not the warmer weather that's drawn him away from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It's the contrast in intellectual climates: frozen and dead, where Western history is concerned, at Harvard; full of green shoots at the University of Florida.

"We have not hired with tenure a historian in a Western field -- ancient, medieval, early modern, or modern -- in a decade," Hankins says about his Harvard department, which in that time "lost eight senior historians in Western fields -- all major figures -- through death, retirement or departure for other universities. I will be the ninth, and I am not expecting to be replaced."

The loss isn't just Harvard's: "the replacement of Western history by global history" has done "serious harm ... to the socialization of young Americans," the historian warns in Compact magazine.

"When you don't teach the young what civilization is, it turns out, people become uncivilized."

In the 40 years Hankins taught at Harvard, he saw his profession shift its focus from European civilization to cultures once considered barbarian:

"In this absurdist rendering of world history, Central Asian peoples," for example, "are presented as the drivers of cultural innovation, spreading their benign influence east and west via the Silk Road."

This is marketed as "'de-centering the West,' where Western countries are literally put in their place as an ugly growth on the back side of Eurasia."

---

TOPICS: Education; Society
KEYWORDS:

[frank ballenger]

Harvard ended 2024 with $53 Billion managed by the Harvard Management Company (HMC).

That part of the Western culture they accept.

[Red6]

Nice article.

Good read.

[Ditto]

Nothing lasts forever, and that certainly includes Harvard as a respected institution. It is rapidly losing its former status as an elite school. Others will replace it and soon Harvard will just be a memory. Another example of leftist destruction.

[Labyrinthos]

He should have transferred to Providence College, where western civ is a core, 16 credit requirement to graduate:

https://academics.providence.edu/core-curriculum/

[MinorityRepublican]

Tier 1 (elite private/specialized: Ivy-level selectivity & outcomes) — MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, University of Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Rice; Tier 2 (Public Ivies: top flagships w/ elite outcomes & ROI) — UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, UNC Chapel Hill, UT Austin.

You're not going to go to Harvard unless you're legacy. In that case, it's worth it anyway due to the connections you'll make. If you're a Kennedy, you'll still want to go to Harvard.