Victor Davis Hanson

Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow
Awards and Honors:
Statesmanship Award from the Claremont Institute
(2006)
Biography: 

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; his focus is classics and military history.

Hanson was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992–93), a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991–92), the annual Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Visiting Fellow in History at Hillsdale College (2004–), the Visiting Shifron Professor of Military History at the US Naval Academy (2002–3),and the William Simon Visiting Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University (2010).

In 1991 he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award. He received the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism (2002), presented the Manhattan's Institute's Wriston Lecture (2004), and was awarded the National Humanities Medal (2007) and the Bradley Prize (2008).

Hanson is the author of hundreds of articles, book reviews, and newspaper editorials on Greek, agrarian, and military history and essays on contemporary culture. He has written or edited twenty-four books, the latest of which is The Case for Trump (Basic Books, 2019). His other books include The Second World Wars (Basic Books, 2017); The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - from Ancient Greece to Iraq (Bloomsbury 2013); The End of Sparta (Bloomsbury, 2011); The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern (Bloomsbury, 2010); Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (ed.) (Princeton, 2010); The Other Greeks (California, 1998); The Soul of Battle (Free Press, 1999); Carnage and Culture (Doubleday, 2001); Ripples of Battle (Doubleday, 2003); A War Like No Other (Random House, 2005); The Western Way of War (Alfred Knopf, 1989; 2nd paperback ed., University of California Press, 2000); The Wars of the Ancient Greeks (Cassell, 1999; paperback ed., 2001); and Mexifornia: A State of Becoming (Encounter, 2003), as well as two books on family farming, Fields without Dreams (Free Press, 1995) and The Land Was Everything (Free Press, 1998). Currently, he is a syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services and a weekly columnist for the National Review Online.

Hanson received a BA in classics at the University of California, Santa Cruz (1975), was a fellow at the American School of Classical Studies, Athens (1977–78), and received his PhD in classics from Stanford University (1980).

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Recent Commentary

Analysis and Commentary

Obama’s Good and Bad Words

by Victor Davis Hansonvia National Review
Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Barack Obama once warned, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter!” He was right. They do...

Analysis and Commentary

Is There a Pattern Here or What?

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Corner (National Review Online)
Tuesday, May 4, 2010

[N]ear-miss (and not-so-near-miss) radical-Islamist incidents are incidental to, rather than a symptom of, our new de facto policy of suggesting that the problem with our "contingency operations" against "man-caused disasters" is with us rather than with hostile Muslim terrorists...

Analysis and Commentary

Thoughts on Gorism

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Works and Days
Sunday, May 2, 2010

From the Sanctimonious to the Ridiculous: I think sometime this year elite radical environmentalism died...

Analysis and Commentary

Greek Mythology

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Corner (National Review Online)
Friday, April 30, 2010

Anyone who lived in Greece in the pre-EU days and compared that era to the booming present might — both empirically and in anecdotal fashion — wager that Greece will never, never pay back what it owes...

Analysis and Commentary

Of Laureates and Cowboys

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Townhall
Thursday, April 29, 2010

In politics, having power and keeping it often mean fudging a little on ideology....

Analysis and Commentary

Deconstructing the Outrage

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Corner (National Review Online)
Wednesday, April 28, 2010

I have been trying to collate all the furor over the Arizona law, much of it written by those who do not live in locales that have been transformed by illegal immigration...

Analysis and Commentary

How Could They Do That in Arizona!

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Works and Days
Tuesday, April 27, 2010

As I understand the opposition to the recent Arizona law, it boils down to something like the following: the federal government’s past decision not to enforce its own law should always trump the state’s right to honor it...

Analysis and Commentary

The Remains of a California Day

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Works and Days
Friday, April 23, 2010

Yesterday I think I understood why California is in deep trouble. Let me walk you through another day out here...

Analysis and Commentary

What's Happening With Isreal?

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Townhall
Thursday, April 22, 2010

Current American relations with our once-staunch ally Israel are at their lowest ebb in the last 50 years...

Analysis and Commentary

A New Nowhere Debate?

by Victor Davis Hansonvia Corner (National Review Online)
Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Now would be a particularly bad time for the president to push for amnesty under the rubric of comprehensive immigration reform — an approach that failed Bush, despite economic good times and supposedly a supportive base...

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