James Hankins, a retired Harvard professor, is sounding the alarm about what he describes as a deeply entrenched anti-white and anti-Western ideology now dominating America’s most prestigious university, warning that discrimination has quietly become policy under the banner of progress.
Hankins who was a Harvard professor of history for roughly 40 years, says the Ivy League institution he once revered has been transformed into a place where identity politics eclipse scholarship and white male students are increasingly treated as unwelcome outsiders.
In a scathing essay explaining his departure, the Harvard professor accused the Ivy League school of embracing rhetoric that portrays Western civilization as inherently corrupt and white men as morally suspect.
Harvard professor James Hankins wrote an article, "Why I'm Leaving Harvard" and its going viral.
After DEI stupidity, ridiculous woke bullshit, COVID restrictions, and discrimination against white applicants (men), he decided to walk away from Harvard and is now headed to the… pic.twitter.com/SOGuyTbiYN
— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) December 31, 2025
“The exclusion of white males has become an open secret,” James Hankins wrote, arguing that what was once unthinkable is now normalized on the Harvard campus. He described an academic culture in which being white, male, and interested in Western intellectual traditions is treated less as a qualification and more as a liability — a stark reversal, he says, of Harvard’s historic commitment to merit and open inquiry.
James Hankins said the shift on the Harvard campus accelerated dramatically after the summer of 2020, when violent riots erupted nationwide following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. At the time, the retired Harvard professor said he expected the university’s response to amount to little more than performative gestures and empty statements. Instead, Hankins now believes that moment marked a far more troubling turning point at Harvard, when rhetoric hardened into practice and discrimination against white men — particularly in graduate admissions — quietly became institutionalized.
According to the Harvard professor, the climate of that period reshaped internal decision-making at the Ivy League college. Diversity initiatives multiplied, committees were restructured, and ideological alignment began to outweigh academic merit. What started as public messaging, Hankins argues, soon translated into real-world consequences at for who was allowed to advance within Harvard’s elite programs.
In reviewing Harvard graduate student applicants in the fall of 2020, Professor Hankins said he encountered an exceptional candidate who he believed was a perfect fit for the program. The following year, however, he says he was stunned by what he was told behind closed doors at Harvard. “In 2021, I was told informally by a member of the admissions committee that ‘that’ — meaning admitting a white male — was not happening this year,” Hankins wrote. “The one exception I found to the general exclusion of white males had begun life as a female.”
PRÁSKNI TĚMI DVEŘMI
Dlouholetý profesor Harvardu opouští Ivy League. A nemlčí.
Po 40 letech na Harvardu publikoval historik James Hankins ostrou esej, v níž obvinil Harvardskou univerzitu z přijetí WOKE kultury, která je proti bělochům a mužům a která podle něj zkorumpovala… pic.twitter.com/CgUeAEcBlA
— Michal Poláček ✝ (@okurkabinladin) December 31, 2025
That moment, the Harvard professor said, crystallized years of growing concern. He argues that Harvard no longer merely promotes diversity, but enforces ideological conformity, sidelining dissent and punishing those who fall outside favored identity categories. Admissions, hiring, and promotion decisions, he claims, are now filtered through political assumptions rather than excellence.
Professor Hankins also warned that Harvard’s curriculum has shifted sharply away from balanced engagement with Western history. Courses that once examined the West critically but fairly, he said, now present it almost exclusively as a story of oppression, stripped of context and nuance. “When universities teach students to despise their own civilization,” Hankins wrote, “they should not be surprised when those students lose faith in the institutions meant to preserve it.”
Harvard students, Professor Hankins added, quickly learn that questioning the dominant narrative carries consequences. Many stay silent, repeating approved views to avoid academic or social punishment. The result, the now retired Harvard professor warned, is a campus that teaches students what to think rather than how to think.
