The Good, the True, and the Viral: Why I'm Leaving Harvard and the Strange Death of Western History
- Mar 25
- 2 min read
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 figures. When my article was published, Compact published as a teaser only the first few paragraphs, which addressed the same issue. My article also went viral, much to my surprise.
I had never before published a piece of opinion journalism, even in the Wall Street Journal, which was widely reported in outlets such as the New York Post, The Daily Mail (U.S. edition), and the Corriere della Sera (Milan). Friends from around the world wrote to me asking if the article were true, even though I had announced my intention to retire four years previously. Most readers of the article read only the first few paragraphs teased by Compact, being understandably unwilling to subscribe just to get access to a single article. Most assumed that the entire article was a critique of anti-white wokeness at Harvard. The large proportion of the radical right that takes Harvard as the symbol of all that is wrong with American higher education seized on the publicly available portions of the article with cries of vindication. Especially after the article was retweeted by Elon Musk on X, it became big news. I now had my 15 minutes of fame as the courageous defender of downtrodden white males against the serried ranks of the woke…