Niall Ferguson: belief

Transcript context

…I read them. Yes, but we’re a dwindling number, Tyler, a dwindling number. I’m increasingly of the opinion that it’s a fool’s errand to try to change people’s minds with 400- or 500-page volumes. I want to write the Kissinger book because I think there’s a lot to be learned from the 1970s, and I’ve gathered some amazing material that nobody’s looked at before because most books about the 1970s just use American sources or a few foreign sources, but I’ve been looking at the Central Committee transcripts, and they’re great. That’s a book worth writing, and it will illuminate the US-China relationship in a fresh way. After that, I think it’s time to move on. The most important thing to do — I’m now 57; if you can count on maybe a couple more decades, let’s assume I live as long as my dad — the most important thing you can do in that remaining part of your life must be intellectual succession and planning. I don’t see a whole lot of intellectual succession. Academic life, in my view, has gone off the rails in ways that I never would have imagined in the 1980s when I was starting out. We need new institutions, urgently need new institutions, and I want to spend more time on institution building and less time on book writing in whatever time is left to me, and that should strike terror in my enemies’ hearts. Niall Ferguson, thank you very much. Again, I’m happy to recommend Niall’s latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.…

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