One of Ferguson’s most controversial proposals is his support for American empire.

“If you look at the problem historically, a liberal empire may offer better outcomes—not only to the imperialist but to subject peoples—than the available alternatives,” he said at the signing. “That offends American sensibilities so much that I can not imagine an audience of Americans agreeing with it. It just happens to be true.”

Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60, who studies modern European history, says that while he agrees with Ferguson’s comparison between U.S. expansion and the British Empire, the two scholars disagree on the normative question about American empire.

“It makes sense to call us imperial,” Maier says. “I think Niall is happier with this development than I am. There’s a group of Brits and others out there who think we should take it in hand and be a benevolent and good empire. I’m more doubtful that we can be.”

While Maier and his history department colleagues are well-regarded academics within their various fields, few—if any—have attained Ferguson’s level of public prominence. Last month alone he penned two pieces for The New York Times, both touching on contentious issues—one trying to understand the high level of Muslim immigration into Europe and the other calling for “severity” in dealing with uprisings in Iraq.

Coolidge Professor of History David G. Blackbourn, soon to be Ferguson’s colleague, is pleased that Ferguson will be bringing his reputation for controversial views to Harvard.

“He’s controversial on everything he touches,” Blackbourn says. “It’s essential to have people like Niall Ferguson to test your ideas, to make you think about things.”

History Department Chair Akira Iriye says that Ferguson’s analysis of the modern world is primarily responsible for his reputation as a controversial scholar, but that Ferguson is not strikingly different from all of his colleagues in stirring academic disputes.

“Each [new history professor] in his own way is controversial, in the sense of presenting original interpretations of historical events,” Iriye wrote in an e-mail. “Ferguson may be more ‘controversial’ in the sense that, perhaps more than most of us, he is willing to address contemporary issues and use his historical knowledge as the basis for some policy recommendations.”

Ferguson scoffs at the idea that he is politically controversial and, far from the common characterization of his views as intellectually conservative, insists that he is a traditional liberal.

“A lot of my arguments, whether they be in defense of empire or whether they be critical of certain European institutions are essentially actuated by fairly classical liberalism,” he says.

“In terms of economic thought, it’s not difficult to locate me in the Adam Smith tradition,” he adds.

THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

Ferguson may reject the idea that he is politically controversial, but he embraces his status as an academic in the public eye. He says that his devotion to writing op-eds and reflecting on the present grows out of his own history, which has taken him from journalism to academia, and from Glasgow to Greenwich Village.

Ferguson went to school at Magdalen College in Oxford, the same college where the famous historian A.J.P. Taylor—whose work Ferguson confessed in The Times of London to having “read too much” of as a teenager—was a fellow for 38 years.