Harvard Professor apologizes for Keynes comments

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By MAE ANDERSON

NEW YORK (AP) - Niall Ferguson, a Harvard history professor and author, apologized on Saturday for saying economist John Maynard Keynes was less invested in the future because he was gay and had no children.

Ferguson said his remarks at an earlier conference were "as stupid as they were insensitive."

During a question-and-answer session after a prepared speech at the Altegris Strategic Investment conference in Carlsbad, Calif. on Thursday, Ferguson was asked to comment about Keynes, an influential 20thcentury British economist who advocated government spending as a way to make up for lagging demand in a down economy.

Ferguson suggested that Keynes philosophy was shaped by his homosexuality. Keynes, therefore, had no children so he wasn't as invested in future generations as others might be, Ferguson said.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130504/DA62MD081.html

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In this Friday, Sept. 3, 2010 photo, Harvard history professor and author Niall Ferguson attends the "Intelligence on the World, Europe, and Italy" economic forum, at Villa d'Este, in Cernobbio, on Como Lake, Italy. Ferguson is apologizing for saying economist John Maynard Keynes didn't care about the future because he was gay and had no children. Ferguson made the remarks on Thursday, May 2, 2013, during a question-and-answer session after a prepared speech at the Altegris Strategic Investment conference in Carlsbad, Calif. Asked to comment about Keynes, he suggested that the British economist's philosophy was shaped by being homosexual and therefore childless. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

[harmonicon]

1. Harvard sure knows how to pick 'em, don't they? (nt)

[MannyGoldstein]

6. Elizabeth Warren's a Harvard Prof, too

A mixed bag of smart and opinionated people.

[paleotn]

32. "smart" is a relative term.

...it's interesting how some "smart" people can be just as off their rocker as the general populace, just as sold out to moneyed interests as the average Republican hack or Exxon "scientist". But, since they're considered "smart" by who knows who, their opinions are supposed to hold significantly more weight, no matter if they jive with actual facts or not. Seems to me Mr. Ferguson is just taking up for two of his disgraced colleagues, Haavaad profs and Peterson shills, Rogoff and Reinhart. Ferguson "smart" and opinionated? Maybe. A serious arse? You betcha.

[MannyGoldstein]

35. "A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one."
- Ben Franklin

I probably should have written "clever" rather than "smart".

Another quote:

"Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder."
- George Washington

[alp227]

36. Ferguson has written economic and world history books

Like , The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, so I find his comments VERY unbecoming of a scholar especially one from am ivy league university. Ferguson was scratching the Limbaugh level barrel right there. By hearing them you would NOT believe he was such a prolific scholar.

[brucefan]

2. Wow

Was that a conservative apologizing?

[SCVDem]

3. At least it was a quick apology.

It did not include the 'If I offended anybody' line which was good.

What an ignorant thing to say though.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

4. Seems ironic that a conservative

would accuse Keynes of not giving a shit about future generations.

Fuck you Ferguson, you're a douche.

[BeyondGeography]

5. Stupid and insensitive

A neocon specialty, Niall. Walk with pride, lad.

[Hissyspit]

7. UPDATE 2: While Ferguson may be backing off the aspersions he cast at Keynes as a brief moment of

UPDATE 2: While Ferguson may be backing off the aspersions he cast at Keynes as a brief moment of public misspeech, economist Justin Wolfers pointed readers to this excerpt from Ferguson’s The Pity of War, in which takes a gratuitously homophobic swipe at Keynes, insinuating that the economist’s misgivings about World War I were traceable to the lack of anonymous gay sex in London.

“Though his work in the Treasury gratified his sense of self-importance,” Ferguson wrote, “the war itself made Keynes deeply unhappy. Even his sex life went into a decline, perhaps because the boys he liked to pick up in London all joined up.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/04/harvard-conservative-tries-to-gay-bash-deceased-economist-keynes

[Ian David]

8. That really kind of makes his apology seem less sincere. n/t

[Hissyspit]

9. He's an ass about a lot of things.

[tblue]

12. Why is he obsessed with Keynes' sex life?

Want us to talk about your sex life, Mr. Whatayourface? Stop being weird.

[paleotn]

33. Said Harvard prof doth protest too much, methinks.

...if our experience with virulent American homophobes is any guide.

[markpkessinger]

10. The old conservative pattern . . .

1. Publicly say something utterly outrageous and totally unsupportable that feeds into your audience's worst bigotries and biases;
   
2. Wait for the inevitable backlash when you get called out on it;
   
3. Issue a disingenuous apology insisting that your words did not reflect how you really feel; and
   
4. Lather, rinse, repeat.[/o]

[starroute]

11. According to Wikipedia...

"Ferguson was an advisor to the John McCain U.S. presidential campaign in 2008, and announced his support for Mitt Romney in 2012 and has been a vocal critic of Barack Obama."

Why am I not surprised?

But there's more: "Matthew Carr wrote in Race & Class that 'Niall Ferguson, the conservative English [sic] historian and enthusiastic advocate of a new American empire, has also embraced the Eurabian idea in a widely reproduced article entitled ‘Eurabia?’, in which he laments the 'de-Christianization of Europe' and its culture of secularism that leaves the continent 'weak in the face of fanaticism'." Carr adds that "Ferguson sees the recent establishment of a department of Islamic studies in his Oxford college as another symptom of 'the creeping Islamicization of a decadent Christendom'" and that in a 2004 lecture at the American Enterprise Institute entitled 'The end of Europe?', "Ferguson struck a similarly Spenglerian note, conjuring the term 'impire' to depict a process in which a ‘political entity, instead of expanding outwards towards its periphery, exporting power, implodes – when the energies come from outside into that entity’. In Ferguson's opinion, this process was already under way in a decadent 'post-Christian' Europe that was drifting inexorably towards the dark denouement of a vanquished civilisation and the fatal embrace of Islam."

He also want to replace the federal income tax with a 33% sales tax, privatize Social Security and Medicare, and cut federal discretionary spending by 20%. Sounds like an all-round delight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson

[24601]

14. You left this out: "He was brought up as and remains an atheist." Given the emphasis on religion

on what you posted, how did you miss that?

[starroute]

29. It suggests his interest in religion is of the Leo Strauss variety

Like many of the Neocons, he may see religion as a natural way for the elite to organize and control the lower orders -- while remaining above all such superstitious nonsense themselves.

If you start from that kind of elite position, the only real threats to your dominance are other people's elites -- such as the Saudi royal family or some half-baked plan to reestablish the Caliphate. It's all a power game, and actual religion plays no part in the equation.

[24601]

31. Where's the "Neo" in his views. Is he a fallen liberal or that, as elite universities faculty,

he's just not complying with the prerequisite ideology?

[DallasNE]

20. Ferguson Is A History Professor

Not an Economics Professor so why is anybody even listening to him when he strays far and wide from his training. And what did he advise McCain on, selecting a running mate?

[Bluenorthwest]

25. He told McCain that 'the fundamentals of the econom are sound' the day of the crash

Remember that? McCain on stage live somewhere shouting how healthy the economy was, while the crawl at the bottom of the screen showed the markets tanking quickly? That's the wisdom of Ferguson the bigot.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

21. He also wants to replace the federal income tax with a 33% sales tax

So as to take the tax burden from the bowed backs of the rich and place it on the poor and middle class.

[paleotn]

34. They're fanatical....

....so we've got to be just as fanatical to combat THEM. Wonder if Nial worries about radical, islamic, jihadi supermen under his bed at night?

[msongs]

13. more like "I am sorry I got in trouble for saying what I truly believe" nt

[Jack Rabbit]

15. Hmmmmm . . .

Would Ferguson suggest heterosexuality as a determining factor in his perversely positive view of imperialism?

It would be silly, and as one who regards imperialism as little more than slavery on a national scale, where instead of an individual in bondage having no right to collect wages on his labor, but instead seeing them go to a self-sppointed master, a subjugated nation has no right to exploit its own natural resources but instead sees the control of its wealth pass to another self-appointed tyrant, the mother country.

And exactly where does Professor Ferguson get off saying Lord Keynes had no stake in the future and that he, as a straight man, does? There is ample evidence that Keynesian economic prescriptions work. That is a lot more than can be said for for austerity, a program designed to put the masses in poverty and keep them there. So exactly who is who is more concerned with the future, people like Keynes or people like Ferguson.

Quack, quack, professor.

[blackspade]

16. What an assclown.

[stevebreeze]

17. Ferguson is wrong about the economy

why would he have any value critiquing economists?

[freshwest]

18. Can't read an excel graph, goes for the gutter. STHU.

[DallasNE]

19. Why Would A History Professor

Venture outside his area of expertise so far. That is a recipe for saying something really, really stupid and Ferguson did not disappoint. Keynes economic theory remains the definite work on economics to this day.

[DCBob]

22. a "slip of the tongue" comment like that reveals a person's true beliefs.

[CTyankee]

23. Had he been drinking?

in vino veritas...

[Bluenorthwest]

27. Such commentary and libels fill his work and always have. He's a simple minded twit of a

sort they make fewer of each year, an outmoded brand of shiftless idiot that only the UK could create. This con man is out to get press.

[randome]

24. He looks -and sounds- like Shaun Hannity.

A regular Douchebag Duo.

[MADem]

26. That's as dumb as Bush saying he didn't care about history or his legacy, because he'll be dead! nt

[JustAnotherGen]

28. He should

Also apologize to every woman who is childless by choice or chance regardless of the sexuality she was born with. This is the same hammer that is used in Corporate America when it comes to paid time off.


Well Sally has three kids and is Jewish but needs to be home with them - 5 miles from work on Christmas Eve. But you can't fly 450 miles to be home with your family on Christmas Eve.

I learned real quick to get my tickets and put in my time in August.

Not having children does not mean that:

A. One does NOT have a family

And

B. One does not care about the future of their country.

[bucolic_frolic]

30. In my delusions

Radical free-market libertarians derive from the fierce imperialists
of the 1600s-1700s, the kind who built fortunes that still exist
today on the backs of the slave trade and sugar cane and rum
trade on plantations in the West Indies. It was natural to them
because back then there were fewer laws regulating anything.

But those ideologies still exist today in ideologues like this idiot.