Richard Hanania

Richard Hanania (born August 28, 1985) is an American political scientist, writer, and right-wing online personality. He is the founder and president of the think tank Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI). He acknowledged these writings when they were first reported in 2023 and has since renounced them.

Hanania was a contributor to Project 2025 regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. His advocacy against DEI has influenced Republican and conservative policy-makers in the United States, with Vox calling him "the man whose tweets helped kill DEI".

Early life and education Hanania grew up in Oak Lawn, Illinois.

When he was 15 years old, he was sent to the residential treatment program Casa by the Sea, which operated as a center for troubled teenagers. He said the experience "completely changed the course of [his] life for the better".

He attended Moraine Valley Community College and studied linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 2009.

Career Hanania was a research fellow at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies of Columbia University and a fellow at Defense Priorities as of 2020. In 2022 he became a fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Salem Center for Public Policy, which had been launched in 2020 with funding from right-wing donors.

Hanania has written opinion pieces for The Washington Post, In 2020 he founded the think tank the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI). He is the organization's president. and JD Vance, noted by Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie, and publicized by Tucker Carlson, who invited Hanania on his show twice.

Hanania has been linked to the New Right. In a 2023 essay, Hanania wrote that the only way to reduce crime is "a revolution in our culture or form of government. We need more policing, incarceration, and surveillance of black people. Blacks won't appreciate it, whites don't have the stomach for it." The essay caught the attention of Elon Musk, who called it "interesting". The book has promotional blurbs by Vivek Ramaswamy, David O. Sacks, and Peter Thiel, who wrote, "Hanania shows we need the sticks and stones of government violence to exorcise the diversity demon." Robert VerBruggen, writing in the Washington Examiner, called it "an interesting and mostly sober take on long-debated civil rights topics from one of the Right's most frustrating figures." The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties has been called a precursor to Hanania's Origins of Woke.

Hanania was one of the contributors to the writing of Project 2025.

In his 2026 book Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, Hanania argues that populist movements tend to empower corrupt and incompetent leaders because they reject elite expertise and institutional norms. A 2026 profile in The Atlantic discussed the book alongside Hanania's break with Trumpism and reported that, by his own account, he remained right-wing on most policy issues.

Hanania interviewed Steve Hilton, Republican nominee for the 2026 California gubernatorial election, in July 2026.

Writing as "Richard Hoste" (2008–early 2010s)

In 2023, HuffPost analyzed digital records believed to establish that Hanania was the true identity of a poster, "Richard Hoste", who had written articles for multiple far-right publications between 2008 and the early 2010s, including AltRight.com, The Occidental Observer, Taki's Magazine, and VDare. "Hoste" wrote his own blog called HBD Books (a reference to "human biodiversity", a form of scientific racism) He opposed immigration to the United States, saying that "the IQ and genetic differences between them and native Europeans are real, and assimilation is impossible". He cited a speech by neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, who had used Haiti as an example to argue that black people are incapable of governing themselves. He also wrote that he was "the target of a cancellation effort" because "left-wing journalists dislike anyone acknowledging statistical differences between races". In a 2025 Vox interview, he acknowledged that his former views were sincere, stating, "I was looking for people who were angry like me. And I think it was probably a lot of personal things going on in my life. By about 2012, 2013, I had sort of grown out of it, which I think often happens". On August 9, 2023, after his writings as "Richard Hoste" were revealed, the San Antonio Express-News called for University of Texas at Austin to cut ties with Hanania. By August 10, 2023, the Salem Center had removed the "visiting scholar" link to Hanania's bio.

Some journalists and writers have cast doubt on whether Hanania has disavowed racism. Jeet Heer wrote that the revelations might have the effect of making Hanania more prominent, because, "As a former overt racist who now calls himself a supporter of 'enlightened centrism,' he offers a message that can reunite the fractured right."