Though Academia Has Pathetically Failed to Pass on the Western Tradition, There’s Hope for Keeping History Alive

by Jarrett Stepman, The Daily Signal (excerpt)

History is too important to be left to academia, especially in an age of crumbling institutional trust.

On a recent episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Hanson spoke about the remarkable collection of talent pooling at the Hoover Institution, a think tank in California that he’s been a part of for over two decades.

Hanson said Hoover has gathered a

“history group better than any history department in the United States, even though we’re not an academic institution.”

He then listed a handful of historians now affiliated with the institution, including Stephen Kotkin, the great scholar of Soviet history and biographer of Josef Stalin; Barry Strauss, who has written a series of remarkable books on ancient Rome; and Andrew Roberts, who writes on a wide variety of topics from World War II to Napoleon.

“They’re all top-ranked historians,” Hanson said. “And it’s really, it hasn’t been written about. I hope some journalists will take notice.”

I took notice…