Niall Ferguson

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Lore & Background

Ferguson was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 18 April 1964 to James Campbell Ferguson, a doctor, and Molly Archibald Hamilton, a physics teacher. He grew up in the Ibrox area of Glasgow near Ibrox Park football stadium and attended The Glasgow Academy. He was brought up as an atheist, though in a 2023 interview with Jordan Peterson he declared: 'I'm a lapsed atheist ... I go to church every Sunday, precisely because having been brought up as an atheist, I came to realise in my career as a historian that not only is atheism a disastrous basis for a society ... but also because I don't think it can be a basis for individual ethical decision making.' He cites his father for instilling self-discipline and the moral value of work, his mother for encouraging his creative side, and his maternal grandfather, a journalist, for encouraging him to write. He ascribes his decision to read history to Leo Tolstoy's reflections in War and Peace and his admiration of historian A. J. P. Taylor, saying he 'wanted to be the AJP Taylor de nos jours'. At Oxford, Ferguson received a demyship from Magdalen College, wrote a 90-minute student film, played double bass in a jazz band, edited the student magazine Tributary, and became a Thatcherite by 1982. He graduated with a first-class honours degree in history in 1985, studied as a Hanseatic Scholar at the University of Hamburg from 1986 to 1988, and received his DPhil from Oxford in 1989. His dissertation was titled 'Business and Politics in the German Inflation: Hamburg 1914–1924'. His academic career included research fellowships at Christ's College, Cambridge, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, before becoming a fellow and tutor at Jesus College, Oxford, where he was named a professor of political and financial history in 2000. He later held professorships at New York University and Harvard, and in 2016 left Harvard to become a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2021 he co-founded the University of Austin, saying 'higher ed is broken'. His television series The Ascent of Money won an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2009.

Reader's Guide

Niall Ferguson's significance lies in his broad influence as a public intellectual and historian who bridges academia and popular media. His work on financial history, particularly The Ascent of Money, which won an International Emmy Award in 2009, brought economic history to a wide audience. He holds positive views concerning the British Empire. Ferguson has written regularly for Newsweek, Bloomberg Opinion, The Spectator, and the Daily Mail, and has been described as a conservative who calls himself a supporter of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. He was an advisor to the John McCain 2008 presidential campaign and supported the Mitt Romney 2012 campaign. In 2018 at Stanford, emails were released documenting his attempts to discredit a progressive activist student; he resigned from leadership of the Cardinal Conversations free speech initiative once university administrators became aware. Ferguson has said 'Wokeism has gone from being a fringe fashion to be the dominant ideology of the universities.' Knighted in 2024, he remains a prominent voice in historical and political discourse through multiple platforms.

Did You Know?

• Ferguson wrote a 90-minute student film titled 'The Labours of Hercules Sprote' while at Oxford.
• He played double bass in a jazz band called 'Night in Tunisia' during his Oxford years.
• His DPhil dissertation was titled 'Business and Politics in the German Inflation: Hamburg 1914–1924'.
• Ferguson was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004.
• He co-founded the University of Austin in 2021, stating that 'higher ed is broken'.