The Rise and Fall of Western Civilisation- Professor James Hankins

**Konstantin Kisin** (0:00)
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**Konstantin Kisin** (1:19)
After four decades of teaching at Harvard, you decided to leave.

**James Hankins** (1:23)
I was banging my head against the wall for years and years and years. Trying to get the university to go on supporting the teaching of Western civilization. And we have a treasury of Western civilization that has been preserved through the golden thread of tradition over 2,500 years.
It's a story of rise and fall. It's a story of virtue followed by achievement followed by corruption.
It's a story of collapse and run-offs. It's a story of corruption and reform. That's what real human history is like. We have to keep it going. It's up to us.

**Konstantin Kisin** (2:04)
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Professor James Hankins, welcome to TRIGGERnometry.

**James Hankins** (2:31)
Thank you for inviting me.

**Konstantin Kisin** (2:32)
It's a great pleasure to have you. We want to talk about this beautiful book you co-wrote about the history of Western civilization at two volumes actually. I have both at home.
But first of all, I would love to hear a little bit more about you and your background. Of course, there was a pivotal moment where after four decades of teaching at Harvard, you decided to leave, which I imagine is a very difficult decision for someone with tenure at such a prestigious university and such a long history to do. But you did it because you felt that the university was no longer doing the thing that it was supposed to do in your field. Is that right?

**James Hankins** (3:07)
That's exactly right. I actually decided to retire in 2020, the year of George Floyd, the year of COVID, and I just didn't want to do it anymore because they created such a terrible atmosphere.
And they wanted the professors to lecture with masks on, which I refused to do. And I took advantage of the power of the glass of water. Because, you know, when you went, you were wearing a mask during the COVID era, you were allowed to take the mask off when you went to a restaurant and you were served a glass of water. So when I lectured, I brought a glass of water with me, and I took the mask off and drank some water and then lectured. Then no one died.

**Konstantin Kisin** (3:51)
Shocking, really.

**James Hankins** (3:52)
But I didn't want to go on doing that. And I decided I would retire. And I got into a four, I got into a retirement rhythm. But the other real reason I was retiring is because I was banging my head against the wall for years and years and years, trying to get the university to go on supporting the teaching of Western civilization, which had been a mainstay of the university from its very beginning.
We always taught Greeks and Romans and medieval Christendom and European history. But my department went global in the 1990s, and they basically took the new positions out of the hide of Western civ topics. We last hired someone to teach Western civ European history in 2008 We lost eight historians after that date. So it was evident to me that they had someone had made a decision to zero out Western civ.