James Hankins is a Renaissance historian, longtime Harvard professor, and co-author of The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. In this conversation with Coleman Hughes, he explains why he recently left Harvard, after nearly four decades, and why he believes the study of Western civilization has quietly disappeared from American education. Hankins argues that if students want to understand ideas like free speech, equality, and the rule of law, they need to know the long history story behind them—from ancient Greece and Rome through Christianity and the Enlightenment to the modern world. Along the way, he reflects on the controversy surrounding the Western canon, the debate over “dead white men,” and the question of whether a shared civilizational story is still possible in a pluralistic society.

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