The Golden Thread: A Live Conversation with James Hankins

Join us Thursday, April 30 at 3:00 pm ET for a live virtual conversation on Western civilization’s founding principles with Jack Miller Center resident historian Elliott Drago and James Hankins of the Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. This live webinar is free and open to the public.

As American education experiences a true civics renaissance, it is important to remember that the principles of our political tradition represent a centuries-long civilizational continuity. Renaissance historian James Hankins has been working to restore a perception of that truth his entire career.

We invite you to a conversation about the enduring heritage of the West’s central principles—the principles at the core of the American founding. We will discuss Hankins’ new book, co-written with esteemed American historian Allen Guelzo, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, as well as America’s 250th anniversary.

Where do the ideas, arts, and institutions that shape Western civilization originate? How were they woven together before they landed on American shores? What are the sources of our modern ideas about science, freedom, equality, law, good government, and virtue? The first volume of Guelzo and Hankins’s new series aims to explore these questions and more from the dawn of civilization in Ancient Greece to its flourishing in the Renaissance.