Havard PHD Dr John Harpham: Why Slavery Existed, Cancel Culture & How We Move Forward

Dr. John Harpham, historian, Harvard PhD, Duke graduate, and author of The Intellectual Origins of American Slavery — a book nominated for the History Pulitzer Prize — joins Personable to explore the intellectual and moral foundations of one of history’s greatest wrongs.

From growing up in New Orleans to studying at Harvard and teaching across America’s top universities, John shares how a decade-long journey through rare books and political thought reshaped his understanding of human morality, freedom, and the legacy of slavery.

In this episode, John explains how he turned from a student of ideas into a scholar of history — and how studying slavery changes the way we understand ourselves.

He breaks down why slavery wasn’t just an economic system but an intellectual one, shaped by the moral reasoning, theology, and politics of its time. The conversation explores race, freedom, cancel culture, moral relativism, and the timeless need for critical thinking.

In this episode, Dr. John Harpham discusses:
◽️ Falling in love with books and scholarship at a young age
◽️ The leap from consumer to producer of knowledge
◽️ How he researched 16th–17th-century texts to trace slavery’s origins
◽️ Slavery as both an economic and intellectual institution
◽️ How moral “attention” shifts across history — and why that matters

⏱ Timestamps
00:00 Intro 
00:34 Why John loves books and writing
05:00 Producing knowledge and the discipline of research
11:30 Growing up in New Orleans and confronting history
15:00 Remembering vs. erasing — how to deal with the past
17:00 The moral lessons of slavery and self-reflection
20:20 Monuments, commemoration, and moral complexity
25:00 Cancel culture and freedom of thought
32:00 Race, economics, and the origins of slavery
39:30 The moral logic that justified slavery
43:00 Moral relativism vs. moral absolutism
47:00 Why critical thinking is democracy’s foundation
49:30 How academia can protect reason and open debate
53:00 Lessons learned from writing for a decade
54:00 The biggest takeaways from studying slavery
57:00 Being nominated for the History Pulitzer Prize
59:00 Legacy, teaching, and what’s next — Volume Two
1:02:00 One thing every listener should take away

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📌 Resources
Dr. John Harpham:
◽️ Page: https://www.ou.edu/cas/classicsandletters/people/john-harpham

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Personable is a podcast dedicated to helping listeners become the best they can be by learning from the world’s best in their respective fields. This mission is inspired by my mother, Louise, who encouraged me to become the best version of myself before she passed away from cancer in 2023.

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