Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and other media outlets. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson is perhaps best known for his 2001 book, Carnage and Culture. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer, growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California, and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. Hanson, who is of Swedish descent, grew up on a family farm at Selma, California, in the San Joaquin Valley. His mother was a lawyer and judge, his father an educator and college administrator. Hanson's father and uncle played college football at the College of the Pacific under Amos Alonzo Stagg.[3] Along with his older brother Nils and fraternal twin Alfred, Hanson attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. Hanson received his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1975[4] and his PhD in classics from Stanford University in 1980. He is a Protestant Christian.[5] Hanson is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Fellow in California Studies at the Claremont Institute, and professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno,[6] where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classics program at that institution. In 1991 Hanson was awarded an American Philological Association's Excellence in Teaching Award, which is awarded to undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.[6] He has been a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), as well as holding the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002–03). Hanson writes a weekly column syndicated by Tribune Media Services, and has been published in The New York Times, American Heritage, and The New Criterion, among other publications. In 2006, he started blogging at PJ Media. In 2007, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush. Hanson cites the Theban general and statesman Epaminondas, Winston Churchill, and the US generals William Tecumseh Sherman and George Patton as his heroes. In the field of military history, Hanson cites John Keegan as being influential, and shares a mutual admiration with fellow classicist Donald Kagan and the historian Steven Ozment. Hanson co-authored the book Who Killed Homer? with John Heath. This book explores the issue of how classical education has declined in the US and what might be done to restore it to its former place. This is important, according to Hanson and Heath, because knowledge of the classical Greeks and Romans is necessary to fully understand Western culture. To begin a discussion along these lines the authors state, "The answer to why the world is becoming Westernized goes all the way back to the wisdom of the Greeks—reason enough why we must not abandon the study of our heritage".[8] Hanson and Heath blame the academic classicists themselves for the decline, accusing them of becoming so infected with political correctness and postmodern thinking, not to mention egoism and money-grubbing (grants, visiting professorships, conference-hopping, promotion based on unreadable publications), that they have lost sight of what Hanson and Heath feel the classics truly represent. They say it this way, "the study of Greek in the last twenty years became a profession, a tiny world—but a world of sorts nonetheless—of jets, conferences, publicity, jargon, and perks". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Davis_Hanson

• published: 04 May 2015
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