Kagan’s farewell lecture

Yale Sterling Professor Donald Kagan retires from the faculty at the end of this academic year. The author of a classic four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War and other formidable works of learning, he is an old-fashioned scholar and teacher. To say he has had a long and distinguished career at Yale understates matters considerably.

On April 25 he gave his farewell lecture to a packed audience assembled by the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale. I wrote briefly about Professor Kagan and his farewell lecture here, linking to several of his books, his Commentary essays and to Matthew Kaminski’s Wall Street Journal interview with him.

Why did Professor Kagan give the Buckley Program the honor of hosting his farewell lecture? The Buckley Program was founded by a group of Yale undergraduates in 2010 under the guidance of Professor Kagan, and the Buckley Program has now posted the video of Professor Kagan’s farewell lecture. The lecture proper begins in the video below, part 1 of 4, at about 7:30, following introductions by Harry Graver ’14 and Charles Hill. The succeeding videos of the lecture follow automatically. (Other videos of Buckley Program events are accessible here, including a recent debate between David Brooks and Jay Nordlinger.) I invite you to sit back and enjoy Professor Kagan’s farewell lecture.

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