All Writings and Appearances

Triggernometry, August 13, 2026 On August 13, 2026, James Hankins appeared on the Triggernometry podcast, hosted by Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster. Their conversation took an in-depth tour of the Western tradition, from the Greeks to the Romans to Christendom to the Reformation to the Enlightenment and the birth of classical liberalism. The interview was taped during the 2026 Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference (June 23-25). For those interested in read

Law & Liberty, August 4, 2026 The new Trump Accounts, offering tax-advantaged investment accounts to every American born between January 1, 2026, and December 31, 2028, were officially launched a month ago on the 4th of July. The US Treasury deposited $1,000 in the accounts of 6 million Americans who signed up (out of the 14.3 million eligible); by the end of July, the number enrolled had reached 7 million. On the Monday after the launch, from the Oval Office, Trump rang the

Dad Saves America, July 3, 2026 On July 3, 2026, James Hankins appeared on the top-rated podcast Dad Saves America, hosted by the filmmaker, entrepreneur, and father John Papola. The wide-ranging interview touches on a variety of topics, including what has happened to the study of Western civilization in the universities, virtue politics, the unique parallel structure of church and state in the medieval period, how the medieval church made its peace with capitalism, and the d

The Golden Thread (Substack), July 1, 2026 I have only once written a piece for the popular prints that had the dubious honor of going viral. It was called “Why I’m Leaving Harvard” and can be found here. I thought that readers of this Golden Thread Substack might find interesting a more intimate perspective on academe’s fall from grace, and particularly the malign effects of DEI on teaching. The following is a personal reminiscence given in 2016 at a memorial conference in h

The Golden Thread (Substack), June 22, 2026 Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413-1494) was the most important political philosopher in the tradition of humanist virtue politics as well as a fine Latin poet (click here for an overview of his ideas). His short letter-treatise on How To Be a Good Magistrate (De gerendo magistratu) offers a striking contrast with Machiavelli’s approach to the exercise of political power. Patrizi in fact had far more practical experience in government

The Golden Thread (Substack), June 17, 2026 Francesco Patrizi of Siena (1413-1494) was the greatest political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance before the generation of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) and Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540). He is the principal exponent of the humanist tradition of ‘virtue politics.’ As such, he was the first Western political philosopher since antiquity to devote sustained attention to the question of how a republic devoted to liberty an

The Golden Thread (Substack), June 3, 2026 On May 14, 2026, James Hankins was awarded the prestigious Bradley Prize. What follows is a typescript of his remarks on that occasion. To watch the video of the speech, click here. I’m listening to myself talking, and I say to myself, “Did I just say that I’m going to revive Western civilization singlehandedly?” Harvard professors are supposed to be arrogant, but maybe I’ll be less arrogant when I go to Florida. I’m not quite so ful

The Golden Thread (Substack), May 26, 2026 If ‘polyarchical’ means rule by more than one person, i.e., non-monarchical government, then the ideal government as depicted in the Republic is polyarchic. The regime Plato envisages is an aristocracy of the perfectly wise and good. These men have been chosen from among the guardian class (described as defensive warriors) for their aptitude for philosophy. They receive a special philosophical education leading to a vision of the Goo

Roundtable after the Bradley Prize award ceremony, May 14, 2026 On May 14, 2026, James Hankins was awarded the prestigious Bradley Prize, along with Senator Phil Gramm and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik. After the award ceremony, at which each recipient gave an acceptance speech (for James Hankins’ speech, click here), all three men sat down for a roundtable discussion with Kimberley A. Strassel of the Wall Street Journal, herself a Bradley Prize winner in 2014. The Golden Thread fea

On May 14, 2026, James Hankins was awarded the prestigious Bradley Prize. Now in its 22nd year, the Bradley Prize is awarded to individuals whose extraordinary work exemplifies the Foundation’s mission to restore, strengthen, and protect the principles and institutions of American exceptionalism. “Professor Hankins has devoted his career to exploring and defending the great ideas that form the moral and intellectual foundations of the West,” said Rick Graber, president and CE

The Golden Thread (Substack), May 11, 2026 Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Encounter Books, the two volumes that comprise The Golden Thread have achieved a physical monumentality that we never dreamed of when Allen Guelzo and I began to write them over four years ago. Laden as they are with hundreds of color images, maps and primary sources, and printed on sturdy paper, the volumes make, quite literally, a weighty impression: the two of them together weigh nearly 12 po

The Golden Thread (Substack), May 4, 2026 File this one under l’esprit de l’escalier: the staircase witticism, the clever remark you think of only after the opportunity to say it is past—only once you’ve left madame’s salon and are heading down the stairs. I’m convinced that one reason why so many people love X (née Twitter) is that it gives them sufficient time to formulate clever remarks. The true wit has clever repartee on the tip of his tongue; we mere Twitter-wits get an

The Golden Thread (Substack), April 24, 2026 This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 discusses the popular feminist slogan, “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” and proposes a different lens through which to view the great achievements of women. The first Western barbarian king to convert, far in advance of the rest, was Clovis I of the Franks, who was baptized as a Catholic on Christmas Day in the year 496. Our source, the historian Gregory of Tours, explains that C

The Golden Thread (Substack), April 22, 2026 The following is a condensed version of The President’s Lecture, given at Mt. Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on March 12, 2026. I’m grateful to the President, Dr. Todd Olson, and to Dr. Bryan Cross for the invitation to speak at this historically Catholic institution. In the course of writing The Golden Thread with my friend, Allen Guelzo, I tried to give a just appreciation of the roles played by women in Western societie

The Golden Thread (Substack), April 10, 2026 In the numerous interviews and podcasts I’ve done about The Golden Thread since the publication of vol. 1 last August, I’ve often been asked to explain how and why Christianity spread in the ancient world. I’m not sure why this subject comes up so often, unless my interviewers are trying to gauge just how Christian I am. I suspect some of them want to know whether I’m capable of a giving a secular, causal account in terms of socio

unSILOed Podcast with Greg LaBlanc, April 1, 2026 It’s one of the oldest debates in political philosophy: Do good laws make good men, or do good men make good laws? Minds have been wrestling with this question since the days of Petrarch and Machiavelli, but both sides may have insights that can inform modern political philosophy. James Hankins and Greg LaBlanc discuss Renaissance humanism, sparked by Petrarch’s response to 14th‑century crises, and explore humanist education f

The Golden Thread (Substack), March, 25, 2026 By kind permission of Matthew Schmitz and Compact , the online magazine, we are able to offer our subscribers access to the full text of my article published on December 29, 2025, under the title “ Why I’m Leaving Harvard .” It was published hard on the heels of a viral article in the same outlet by Jacob Savage which had raised the issue of widespread institutional discrimination against white males, citing credible facts and fig

The Golden Thread (Substack), March 13, 2026 You don’t have to go very far into the extensive literature devoted to the “defense of the humanities” before you find the proud claim that the humanities teach “critical thinking.” What this ordinarily means, when it comes to reading books, is that students are taught a discipline of taking a text apart and seeing how it ticks, as though it were a machine. In more benign examples of criticism this might amount to rhetorical analys

Conversations with Coleman, March 10, 2026 In this conversation with Coleman Hughes, James Hankins discusses 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 d

In conversation with Kathleen O'Toole on the Hillsdale College K-12 Classical Education Podcast (February 16, 2026) In this conversation with Kathleen O’Toole, associate vice-president for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College, James Hankins discusses the first volume of The Golden Thread and the importance of classical education. They explore the nature of the Western tradition, the tension between civilization and barbarism, the importance of historical knowledge, and the f