Public Writings

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

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

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

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

Compact, December 29, 2025 Two weeks ago I gave my last lecture at Harvard, where I have been a history professor for forty years. My four decades of experience at one of the world’s leading universities have given me a unique vantage point to trace the replacement of Western history by global history. This change is part of the reason why the younger generation finds itself in a state of moral and intellectual disorientation. My decision to retire was not a sudden one. I am

The American Mind , August 15, 2025 Andrew Beck argues that America needs to revive the ideal of assimilation if our country is to...

Law and Liberty , August 11, 2025 The ongoing clash of the titans, President Trump and Elon Musk, is bringing into high relief the...

First Things , June 23, 2025 The research pursued these days in university humanities departments does not, as a rule, enjoy high esteem...

Law and Liberty , May 15, 2025 The first hundred days of the second Trump presidency have brought unprecedented challenges to the...

The American Mind , May 1, 2025 It’s not often that an opinion writer has the good fortune to elicit serious commentary from...

The Wall Street Journal , April 24, 2025 In recent reports about the Trump administration’s assault on Harvard, the statistic is often...