(NewsNation) — A Harvard University professor who taught history at the prestigious Ivy League institution announced his retirement in a scathing essay that criticizes several cultural aspects of the school, including what he says is the exclusion of white males.
James Hankins crafted the essay, entitled, “Why I Am Leaving Harvard, in which he states that his decision to leave the university “was not a sudden one.” Hankins wrote that his retirement comes four years after the school invoked a “strict COVID regime” that required professors to wear masks while teaching and to conduct classes over Zoom.
“Neither practice accorded with my idea of liberal education,” Hankins wrote, calling the school’s stance on the deadly virus “tyrannous invasions of private life.”
Hankins wrote that his four decades of teaching at Harvard have provided him with a unique vantage point but that he decided in 2020 that he no longer wanted to teach at Harvard. Hankins cited the school’s stance on the COVID-19 pandemic and the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
Professor claims Harvard rejected ‘perfect fit’ who was a white male
The latter drastically changed Harvard’s admissions standards and had “serious consequences for the ways we handled our affairs,” the letter states. Hankins said that in reviewing graduate student applications, he reviewed a candidate who, in the past, would have been a “perfect fit” for the university.
Instead, he said he was informed informally by a member of the admissions committee that admitting a white male into the program would not happen.
In another instance, an undergraduate student who was recognized as the senior with the best academic record was rejected for admission into the school’s graduate program.
“He, too, was a white male,” Hankins wrote in the essay, which was published in Compact magazine.
Hankins wrote that he made calls to several friends at other universities to inquire why the student he had characterized as “literally the best” had been rejected for admission into the graduate program.
“Everywhere it was the same story: Graduate admissions committees around the country had been following the same unspoken protocol as ours,” Hankins wrote. “The one exception I found to the general exclusion of white males had begun life as a female.”
NewsNation reached out to Harvard on Wednesday for comment on the essay but received an out-of-office response from the public affairs office, citing an ongoing holiday break in which the office was closed.
Hankins wrote that he is now making “far better use of his time” at the University of Florida’s Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education. He wrote that the school is committed to reaching the history of Western civilization but also cited Harvard’s approach to higher education.
“When late liberal pedagogy replaced Western civilization courses with global history, serious harm has been done to the socialization of young Americans,” he wrote. “When you don’t teach the young what civilization is, it turns out, people become uncivilized.”
Hankins also criticized the school for changing its “two-book standard,” which required Harvard professors to publish two books to prove their expertise. The New York Post reported that Hankins blamed “feminist activists” for urging the school to drop the requirement.
Hankins wrote that he taught his final class at Harvard earlier this month.
Harvard’s battle with Trump administration
Harvard has remained a popular target for the Trump administration, which has gone after universities and withheld federal research funding over what the administration considers “woke” ideology. Several schools, including other Ivy League institutions like Cornell, Brown and Columbia, have reached settlement deals with the Trump administration to restore federal funding.
Harvard has held out despite officials saying in September that the two sides were close to an agreement that would require Harvard to pay $500 million in fines.