He Wanted to Teach Western Civilization. So He Quit Harvard.

A Renaissance historian, James Hankins left his longtime post at Harvard University in December to join the little-known Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. As he wrote in an essay that sent shock waves through higher education, he says he did so because the Hamilton School is committed to teaching the history of Western civilization—something he has seen largely disappear from American universities. Over his four decades at Harvard, Hankins saw courses centered on Western history increasingly replaced by broader “global history” approaches.

I sat down with Hankins to discuss why he believes the decline of Western civilization courses matters, and what is lost when students no longer learn the intellectual traditions that shaped the modern West: the rise of democracy, the development of the rule of law, the influence of Christianity, and centuries of debate about liberty, equality, and political order.

We discuss the controversy surrounding the Western canon, and how professors should respond when students without Western backgrounds feel excluded from courses centered on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Ultimately, Hankins argues that curricula should prioritize teaching the Great Books because of their intellectual importance, even if that means the authors studied don’t have demographic diversity. If you don’t teach civilization, he says, people become uncivilized.