The lawsuit that never happened (Niall Ferguson vs. Pankaj Mishra)

In searching for the immortal phrase, “piss-poor monocausal social science,” I came across this amusing story of two public intellectuals discrediting each other.

But then this made wonder . . . did the lawsuit ever happen? Here’s what the headline said:

Niall Ferguson threatens to sue over accusation of racism

Historian claims writer Pankaj Mishra accused him of racism and must apologise or face court action

I googled and . . . it looks like Mishra never apologised, but the promised court action from Ferguson never happened. Dude must’ve been too busy making fun of Keynes for being gay and marrying a ballerina and talking about poetry.

People are just suing each other all the time. So let’s take a moment to celebrate an instance when someone decided not to.

34 thoughts on “The lawsuit that never happened (Niall Ferguson vs. Pankaj Mishra)

  1. Speaking of “piss poor…” coming from N. Ferguson, it seems there is quite a lot of it.

    For a lengthy and enjoyable 5-part take-down of Ferguson’s view on the fall of the Roman empire, start here:

    https://acoup.blog/2021/06/11/collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-i-beginnings-and-legends/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-i-beginnings-and-legends

    If you just want the highlights and conclusions you can read part V only, but you’ll miss a lot of good stuff.

    Maybe we should thank Ferguson for being the tiny speck of crap that causes actual experts to drop beautiful pearls of writing in response. ;-)

      • Wonks:

        It’s here:

        By this point, I should hope that the Hollywood vision of Rome as a culturally homogeneous society at any point in its history, speaking the Queen’s Latin, has been well and truly vanquished. Yet that vision of Rome ends up being used to support a particular vision of the causes for Rome’s rise and fall which, having now established the nature of our evidence for diversity in Rome, it is time to approach. The argument – a form of it notably made in 2015 by Niall Ferguson (conspicuously not a Roman historian, I might note) – goes thusly, that Rome was once homogeneous, that the superior power of a homogeneous society allowed Rome to expand, that expansion made Rome diverse and that this weakened Rome such that it fell. Often it appears in the more simplistic form that ‘Rome fell because they let the barbarians in’ with lots of attendant political implications for current policy.

        I’ve heard that America was great before those Brits showed up.

  2. I have been reflecting on the legacies of historians and international relations academics that I heard, read, and knew personally. It seems that most are not on the radar of social media in any appreciable degree. In the 50s through the 70s, academics had more influence with high ranking US officials: especially if they could also render narratives which would expand empire. Samuel Huntington was one the more prominent although in his last book, Who Are We?, Huntington was less enthusiastic about our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I gather Huntington initially was one of the proponents of the pre-emption doctrine. Therefore, he supported the Iraq intervention when it was discussed beforehand.

    Now Niall Ferguson, I heard once at Brookings. I haven’t quite understood his perspectives. I will have to review them at some point. But I do know that many people on the Net between the ages of 30-45 seem to find Empire building tedious and contrary to their goals and objectives. They have immediate concerns about their job prospects and health.

    I am witnessing an end of an era as to history making and writing. Particularly as a consequence of crises in various fields methodologically and theoretically. International relations at the top of the crises list.

    • “In the 50s through the 70s, academics had more influence with high ranking US officials: especially if they could also render narratives which would expand empire.”

      If memory serves, Dick Cheney said something about Reagan showing that deficits don’t matter. I think Reagan also showed that high ranking officials can claim whatever they think people want to hear, without worrying about whether any academics agree.

      • Here is an account of the influence that Princeton especially had on officials and US government agencies.

        How Humanities Scholars Changed Spycraft

        https://paw.princeton.edu/article/p-source

        Alan Dulles, an alumni of Princeton, gave some interesting talks. I heard two of them, as a girl, although I’m not sure how much of them I understood.

        It’s a very intriguing article, pointing to the extent of academics on the expansion of university departments and their role in government.

      • To be honest, I’m not sure whether Huntington was or was not. I read the Soldier and the State, Clash of Civilizations, Who Are We, and Political Order in Changing Societies. From these works, I gathered that Huntington was active in carving US foreign policy toward South Africa. He was an interventionists, in some respects.

        Huntington’s understanding and characterization of democracy was informed by quite elite non-American academics, who, I have maintained, conveyed subjective analyses that suffered from several cognitive and analytical biases. But if one pointed them out to Huntington, Huntington would rethink them. However, Huntington was taken to task by Serge Lang, who was a colleague of my mathematician aunt. I was astounded to learn that Lang deprived Huntington of membership to the National Academy of Sciences. Lang objected the use of statistics by Huntington, which Lang chronicles in his book Challenges.

        I use to see Huntington at various Harvard conferences back in late 60s and early 70s. He struck me as one of a coterie of WASP that had been so influential in international relations soon after the end of WW2.

        Interestingly, Huntington was very wowed by literary talent. And that is not surprising if you read the Princeton article I posted yesterday which details the influence of academics in U.S. governmental policies. Huntington said that creative people animated academics. Creatives being the fount for intellectual expansion of universities. I think that is less true today for many reasons that a thinker like Yuval Harari examines in several of his earlier books.

  3. Accusations of racism are so commonplace that I do not think it means anything anymore. The leading books on race relations flatly say that everyone is a racist. I do not see how anyone could ever prove that he is not a racist.

    • Yes, we live in odd times, ad hominem is no longer a logical fallacy in many circles. Mishra’ MO is to use it frequently as a silencing tactic against center-right or conservative figures.

      • See How to Be an Antiracist, which argues that all policies are racist unless they somehow insure equitable outcomes for all races.

        Also see White Fragility, which argues that all whites are racist as a result of how they are perceived by non-whites.

        In both books, intent to be neutral or fair to all races does not let you avoid being tagged racist.

        • Roger –

          > The leading books on race relations flatly say that everyone is a racist.

          And…

          > See How to Be an Antiracist, which argues that all policies are racist unless they somehow insure equitable outcomes for all races.

          FWIW, arguing that policies that have a negative impact on people in line with their race (i.e., “racist policies”) is not the same thing as saying that everyone is a racist. That distinction is an important focus on Kendi’s argument.

          > I do not see how anyone could ever prove that he is not a racist.

          Sure – being asked to prove a negative is an unrealistic standard, but could you lay out how people are being asked to prove they aren’t racist? It seems like it would indeed be a problem if everyone is simultaneously being told that they’re a racist AND being asked to prove that they aren’t racist.

        • Yes, Kendi makes that distinction, but he still says everyone is either a racist or an antiracist.

          If Niall Ferguson had filed that lawsuit, then he would have been trying to prove that he is not a racist. So yes, sometimes people need to prove they are not racist.

        • Roger:

          I agree that this sort of thing can be extremely frustrating, and the fact that Ferguson has behaved questionably in other occasions (for example, trying to curry favor with his audience by aiming anti-gay snark at Keynes) should not be taken to imply that it’s ok for people to just make things up about him. As I wrote in my linked post, I don’t think either Mishra or Ferguson come off well in their exchange. In any case, I’m glad there was no lawsuit.

        • Roger:

          I think you are missing the main points of these books.

          1. Anti-racism is a term that refers to actively challenging racism where it’s observed rather than simply taking a “neutral” stand that accomplishes little but making one feel good about themselves.

          2. White fragility is a term that refers to the tendency for white people to be offended by assertions of beliefs and behaviors grounded in a structure of white supremacy, such as those put forth by people like Charles Murray.

        • Curious, you are the one missing the point of these books. Anti-racism is not about challenging racism. It is about changing policies in order to get what Kendi sees as more racially desirable outcomes.

          White Fragility targets mainstream white liberals, not people like Charles Murray. It does not refer to people offended by white supremacy. It refers to people who are offended by being called racist, when they are not doing anything racist.

        • Roger –

          > It refers to people who are offended by being called racist, when they are not doing anything racist.

          You’re acting as if whether someone is “doing anything racist” is a dichotomous determination and something that’s easily determined, objectively. I don’t think that’s so. See Dogen’s comment below.

        • I am not giving my opinion. I am just describing what the White Fragility book says. It says all white people are regarded as racist. Even white liberals. Especially white liberals. It says that they should just accept it.

          If my description of these books sounds kooky, try reading the books.

        • Roger –

          > I am not giving my opinion. I am just describing what the White Fragility book says. It says all white people are regarded as racist. Even white liberals.

          I was referring to the “when they are not doing anything racist” part of what you said. The definition of “when they are not doing anything racist” is subjective and on top of that your statement implies that DiAngelo uses that as some kind of definitional criterion for who is targeted by White Fragility.

    • I think this misses the point, honestly.

      Here’s my interpretation of what people are trying to communicate with things you apparently don’t like. It’s pretty simple:

      Sure, there are some total racists, but these are usually a small part of the big problems.

      The big problems come from behavior, or actions, or stereotypes, or wordings, or systems that are racist. And just about everyone is guilty of doing or saying something racist at some point(s) in their lives, regardless of their intentions.

      If we’re going to make progress in making society less racist we all need to acknowledge this.

      The message is that doing or saying something racist doesn’t make one a racist. But by the same token, the fact that I’m not a racist doesn’t mean I don’t do racist things sometimes. Us people of pallor (whites folks) have a bad habit of over reacting to other people pointing out that we’ve said or done something racist.

      The framing of the problems being caused by “racists” leads to a false dichotomy: all or nothing.

      It’s like in statistics (to return to our favorite topic): the idea that continuous variables can be treated as binary can get you into a lot of trouble.

  4. I had never heard of Mishra before and looked at his wiki entry. I do not know if the wiki author was being ironic or if I have a warped sense of humour but I found this bit amusing.

    In 2011, Niall Ferguson threatened to sue Mishra for libel after Mishra published a review of his book Civilisation: The West and the Rest in the London Review of Books. Ferguson claimed that Mishra accused him of racism.

    In March 2014, Yale University awarded Mishra the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize

    • A:

      It would be easy to respond to your comment with some sort of joke, but just to answer in full seriousness: the title of this blog is not “Statistical Methods,” it’s “Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.” An important part of social science is the way in which ideas are discussed and debated in public forums. One concern here is the ability of combatants to threaten lawsuits and other forms of retaliation. So an example where a lawsuit was threatened but then that threat was not carried out—that’s good news, and it’s worth mentioning, I think.

      I recognize that not all readers are interested in all topics that we cover here, so if you’re just coming here for the statistical methods I encourage you to just skip the posts on political science, sociology, economics, sports, etc. Other readers are more interested in the social science and will skip the more technical statistics posts.

      • Yeah ‘a’ Chill!

        I would go nuts on social media if I didn’t have the level of intellectual stimulation that Andrew’s blog provides. In any case, I believe we have a lot to learn about how people think. Erudite passages are great. But some interspersed humor has a place in learning and enjoying conversations.

        Statistics after all is endemic to all fields. And it is critical to evaluate its import and value given that some of it is being debated so heavily.

        BTW, I wonder if any of you attended the NISS Awards Luncheon yesterda. There was a panel presentation at 5:20. Unfortunately a subset of us had problems with Zoom access. There will be a recording posted to day, I understand.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *