James Hankins is, or was until just now, a distinguished professor of history at Harvard, where he taught the history of Renaissance thought. He has now resigned, making his reasons known in a public letter. There are two: first, he deplores the abandonment of teaching about the history of Western civilization in favor of teaching about “world history” with a distinct emphasis on non-Western cultures; second, he is dismayed by the discrimination that he has observed at Harvard against “white males.”
“Why I’m Leaving Harvard,” by James Hankins, Compact, December 29, 2025:
Two weeks ago I gave my last lecture at Harvard, where I have been a history professor for forty years. My four decades of experience at one of the world’s leading universities have given me a unique vantage point to trace the replacement of Western history by global history. This change is part of the reason why the younger generation finds itself in a state of moral and intellectual disorientation.
My decision to retire was not a sudden one. I am coming to the end of a four-year retirement contract that I signed in the fall of 2021. That year I decided I no longer wanted to teach at Harvard. We had just endured almost two years under the university’s strict Covid regime. This was a form of emergency governance that mirrored to a fault the whole country’s uncritical acceptance of The Science and its proclivity, when backed by public power, for tyrannous invasions of private life. At Harvard, professors were told we had to lecture in masks and give seminars on zoom. Neither practice accorded with my idea of liberal education.
The year earlier the university had collectively taken a knee during the Summer of Floyd. This turned out not to be empty virtue-signalling, as I expected, but had serious consequences for the way we conducted our affairs. In reviewing graduate student applicants in the fall of 2020 I came across an outstanding prospect who was a perfect fit for our program. In past years this candidate would have risen immediately to the top of the applicant pool. In 2021, however, I was told informally by a member of the admissions committee that “that” (meaning admitting a white male) was “not happening this year.” In the same year a certifiably brilliant undergraduate I had tutored, who was literally the best student at Harvard—he won the prize for the graduating senior with the best overall academic record—was rejected from all the graduate programs to which he applied. He too was a white male. I called around to friends at several universities to find out why on earth he had been rejected. Everywhere it was the same story: Graduate admissions committees around the country had been following the same unspoken protocol as ours. The one exception I found to the general exclusion of white males had begun life as a female….
None of this, alas, is surprising. The beginning of college used to be marked by parents helping their children unload their stuff from the back of station wagons and carrying those suitcases, that futon, that stand-alone lamp, that print of Picasso’s peace dove or Don Quixote, or Avedon’s photographs of the Beatles, into the waiting dormitories, after which both parents and child would go out for one last meal together before they drove off and he, or she, was left to face the school daze alone.
Nowadays it’s different. Your parents drive you up to the campus, and already the anti-Israel pro-Hamas demonstrators are in the quad, or in Harvard’s case the Yard, screaming their hatred of the Jewish state, accusing it of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” and insistently chanting that “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” which everyone knows means only one thing: the disappearance of the state of Israel, the expulsion or killing of its Jewish inhabitants, and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state of “Palestine.”
The screamers’ repertoire of hate indicates that they will not be satisfied with the complete disappearance of Israel, to be replaced by a twenty-third Arab state. Instead, they want to “globalize the intifada” — that is, to wage an intifada not just against the Jews of Israel, but against Jews around the globe. To these campus warriors, it is Jews everywhere who must be the object of violence and murder, the way Israeli Jews were during the Second Intifada.
There may even be another message being expressed: not just to “globalize the Intifada” against the Jews, but to wage a worldwide Intifada on the entire white, advanced, West, pulling down the whole structure and replacing it with…. Oh, we haven’t thought that through quite yet. Let’s let the wretched of the earth rise up, and pull down the whole rotten edifice that oppresses them, and then we can talk about what should take its place.
It costs $84,000 a year to attend Harvard. Many of these student protesters calling to globalize the Intifada are salon Bolsheviks. How many of those sinister striplings spewing their venom think they would be spared if and when the wretched really do rise up, and kill their well-heeled parents?
James Hankins, and many others, won’t be around to find out.
Rick Gordon says
New England’s loss and Texas’ gain.
Wellington says
For almost thirty years I taught a Western Civilization course at the college level and when I retired this course was done away with and some woke course on diversity was put in its place. This has happened all over America and part of the reason why students are so ignorant of so much they should not be ignorant of. American education from pre-school and kindergarten on up has been taken over by Leftists and the results have been dismal. Again can be seen that the Left ruins everything it touches.
Steven says
thank you for that – agree I paid it too little time then – but now see the importance. I was more vocational but also saw changes – wood shop – gone – metals shop – gone. Anything that boys enjoyed and could learn productive skills and get a job right out high school with – eliminated. I saw it as a culture war against boys and now men then too. Now I see the culture war is the whole thing to be sacrificed on the alter. Last bit don’t underestimate a YouTube video there of there on a topic you enjoy to make a doffence in someone’s life. More than you know as a teacher you’ve helped already without knowing it. Thank you.
Ronald Dewhirst says
Ex-technology teacher here (retired – PTSD etc.), I agree. My capitation was reduced to the extent that I spent time rooting through skips for materials and second-hand shops for equipment. Bad behaviour had to be ignored and projectwork given illegal extra time. It turns out every school does that (so I was told). Managment were lazy and avoided action. It’s all bridge under the water and best not to look. You no doubt did well to last. 🙂
Michael says
I’m going to go out on a limb here (/sarc) and suggest that the demonization of the white male is precisely the reason that so many of our youth have turned to the fad of multiple alternative “genders.” Chances are decent that if a young man nowadays confesses to a girl that he finds her attractive, he will be shut down, even to the point that she will declare herself lesbian. You can imagine what sort of effect a few experiences like that might have on a lonely impressionable adolescent being pummeled daily by “progressive” propaganda..
Just saying…
gravenimage says
+1
Steven says
Looked him up after his letter – found this worth the listen – really like the way he attributes positive progress directly to Christianity without being apologetic about it. Going to look into some more of his works.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7wGeyFuKSy8&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
gravenimage says
Thanks for that link, Steven.
rick says
Sad, very sad. A respected historian whose standards are apparently the highest, must leave his Harvard teaching post because he is so beaten down by Harvard’s rejection of everything that he believes in, including Western ideas, the meaning and importance of Western culture, as well as everything he hates such as the demonization of white males, the hatred of Israel and Jews, and the triumph of non Western civilization over the great Western and Judea Christian civilization which blossomed in the Renaissance, Professor James Hankins’ specialty.
Gandalfs Trouserpress says
Unfortunately this is all too true. The war on the West and whiteness, cancel culture, political correctness, ‘diversity’, wokosity etc. is frightening. Unfortunately it has great momentum. Civilisation has become so successful and complex, that it becomes burdensome to those accustomed to luxury and ease and unfair to those who are unable to gain promotion. Culture has been celebrating its own destruction and dismantlement for decades. Ramadan but no Christmas and so on.
40 rounds says
I learned long ago after many years of “liberal arts” classes and “education” classes that one has to educate oneself. I paid my money and put in the requisite time just to show myself I could do it. I learned more sitting in a comfortable chair in a quiet room reading as many books as I could, books I could carefully select, not some college professor doing that for me. There are some great teachers out there, but most are just leftist nut jobs who are basically just cookie cutters.
gravenimage says
I have degrees in Art and Art History. I learned a great deal in the latter, but was shocked to find that after the first two introductory courses and a side course in printmaking that I was taught *nothing* in Art. And this was at UC Berkeley, which is supposed to be a fine university. And things have only gotten worse since the early 1980s.
James Lincoln says
Formally “elite” colleges – like Harvard – can no longer be considered to be “elite” if they choose people for positions based upon DEI rather than exceptional knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Kris says
Thanks for sharing this information. Not gonna see it anywhere else I suspect.
Ralph says
Just today completed a two-day presentation on “Freedom and Western Civilization” by Hillsdale College (Michigan) in San Antonio, which was so wonderfully uplifting, and then came home to read Professor Hankins’ outing of Harvard’s wokeism. I donate heavily to Hillsdale and for 30 years I have gotten much value from the efforts of this tiny college which accepts no government funding.. I wish more donors would be so motivated.
gravenimage says
Professor Hankins Resigns From Harvard
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What a terrible loss for Harvard and for its students. Still I cannot blame Professor Hankins for this.