Superstar historian Niall Ferguson condems Harvard and Stanford for beeing too woke. He talks about higher education – and his new elite university in Austin, Texas.
Interview: Götz Hamann und John F. Jungclaussen
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Niall Ferguson is one of the world's best-known historians. He isnow a co-founder of theUniversity of Austin,which will begin teaching this fall.
ZEIT ONLINE: Niall Ferguson, you have taught at Harvard and Stanford, some of the best universities in the U.S., maybe in the world, and now you have founded a new university in Austin, Texas because the existing elite universities aren’t good enough? It sounds quite audacious.
Niall Ferguson: I’ve been teaching in the United States for more than 20 years now, and during that time we have seen the rise of the woke mindset. It’s like a crazy religion which censors what people can and cannot say through cancelations, disinvitations and deplatforming and in my eyes nearly all-American universities have now succumbed to this kind of politicization. It is exactly what Max Weber warned against in his great lecture "Wissenschaft als Beruf": You can’t abuse the position of the professor to engage in political activism. Back then, the politicization took universities to the right, and today it’s taken them to the far left. It’s equally bad.
ZEIT ONLINE: You are fighting a progressive worldview?
Ferguson: Oh no, we’re not fighting anything. With UATX, we are trying to build a university that reverts to the original intention of the academy as a place which is dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and truth and is not engaged in political activism. What you then get is better teaching, better knowledge creation and better scholarship.
ZEIT ONLINE: You believe that Harvard, Stanford and many other universities censor the scope of teaching and of academic research, thereby threatening the very basic tenets of democracy and free speech?
Ferguson: That’s right, and one of the reasons why these political elements managed to take hold at so many universities is because there has been a serious failure of governance. One of the cornerstones of UATX is, therefore, to establish a new governance structure to ensure that we can, first of all, provide better undergraduate education and, in the future, build a research university that can never be constrained by the political imperatives that dominate academic life today – or any other political views for that matter. To be sure, I wouldn't be doing this if I thought the existing universities could be fixed. But I’m very clear that they cannot be fixed in a timetable that's compatible with my lifetime. And I'm not prepared to spend the remaining 20 or so years of my life butting my head against the brick walls of Harvard and Stanford. I did that for too long.
ZEIT ONLINE: Could you provide a few examples of the effects this politicization has had on free speech and free research?
Ferguson: There is a new example every week. But before I answer your question, let’s look at the data. FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, recently published its 2024 figures on the curbing of free speech, cancelations and disinvitations on campuses across the U.S. What they show is that the number of incidents that undermine the culture of free inquiry at American universities has reached a new high.
ZEIT ONLINE: What is the purpose of this foundation? And who is behind it?
Ferguson: FIRE was set up by Greg Lukianoff, a lawyer and free speech fundamentalist.He set up the foundation many years ago to call out any violation, whether it’s from the left or the right. They collate and publish data about violations of academic freedom. In the latest ranking, Harvard is the only school with an "abysmal" speech climate rating. I’m not surprised.
ZEIT ONLINE: FIRE cooperates with College Pulse, a respected research company which surveys undergraduate students about their college experience. A representative sample of over 55,000 students took part in FIRE’s latest survey. But Harvard’s "abysmal" rating aside, there are several renowned institutions, like the University of Chicago, that have a very good record for their freedom of expression. Why are you so pessimistic?
Ferguson: If 56 percent of undergraduates in America don’t speak their mind in class, not least because they’re afraid to express a view for which they could be denounced on social media, higher education is effectively dead.
ZEIT ONLINE: According to FIRE’s latest findings, a quarter of students feel the pressure to self-censor often or very often during conversations with other students, with professors, and during classroom discussions. How, though, is the rise of what you call a "woke" mindset responsible for this development?
Ferguson: Very simple. Ninety-five percent of faculty members at Harvard describe themselves as liberals or progressives and they are responsible for the great majority of violations of academic freedom.
