Niall Ferguson Meets with Students; Harvard Faculty Clarify Stance
Historians/Historytags: Harvard, GLBT, David Austin Walsh, Niall Ferguson, Harvard University, John Maynard Keynes, gay historian
David Austin Walsh is editor of the History News Network.
Credit: Flickr.
UPDATE 12:13PM: David Armitage, chair of the Harvard history department, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that the department requested a "post in the modern history of gender and sexuality (jointly with Harvard's program in women and gender studies) long before the recent debate arose." He also pointed to the work of Afsaneh Najmabadi, Nancy Cott, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich as an example of Harvard's pre-existing strength in the field of gender and sexuality studies.
Historian Niall Ferguson, in an attempt to blunt criticism of his recent controversial remarks about John Maynard Keynes's sexuality, spoke on Monday to students at a lunchtime panel at the Harvard College Women's Center.
Prof. Ferguson, who is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard, referred to Keynes as "effete" in comments at an investment conference at the beginning of May, and reporters have unearthed questionable statements in some of Prof. Ferguson's books and articles from the 1990s. He later apologized on his blog and wrote an open letter to students and faculty at Harvard, which was published in the Harvard Crimson.
Prof. Ferguson has been criticized by LGBT historians for his remarks. The Governing Board of the Committee on LGBT History, in a statement released yesterday, said his "subsequent attempts to clarify his statement unfortunately show little more understanding of the history of sexuality than his initial comment did."
Monday's lunch was co-sponsored by a number of GLBT organizations on the Harvard campus, including Harvard College Queer Students and Allies, the Harvard College Office of BGLTQ Student Life, the Women's Center, and the Office of Student Life.
None of Ferguson's colleagues in the Harvard history department have publicly criticized him. However, several members of the Harvard history faculty, in emails to HNN, wished to make clear that their public silence should not be taken as a statement of support for Prof. Ferguson's remarks.
HNN contacted thirty-eight members of the history faculty, We received eleven responses. No respondent was willing to directly criticize Prof. Ferguson on or off the record, and the only two historians who commented on the record -- and who were quoted in the original HNN article -- offered qualified support.
Related Links
comments powered by Disqus
News
- The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It
- Amitai Etzioni, Theorist of Communitarianism, Dies at 94
- Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions
- New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson
- Ohio Unions Link Academic Freedom and the Freedom to Strike
- First Round of Obama Administration Oral Histories Focus on Political Fault Lines and Policy Tradeoffs
- The Tulsa Race Massacre was an Attack on Black People; Rebuilding Policies were an Attack on Black Wealth
- British Universities are Researching Ties to Slavery. Conservative Alumni Say "Enough"
- Martha Hodes Reconstructs Her Memory of a 1970 Hijacking
- Jeremi Suri: Texas Higher Ed Conflict "Doesn't Have to Be This Way"
Trending Now
- New transcript of Ayn Rand at West Point in 1974 shows she claimed “savage" Indians had no right to live here just because they were born here
- The Mexican War Suggests Ukraine May End Up Conceding Crimea. World War I Suggests the Price May Be Tragic if it Doesn't
- The Vietnam War Crimes You Never Heard Of