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Niall Ferguson On What History Can Teach Us About Covid-19

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Historian Niall Ferguson set out his thinking on the greatest crisis in modern times, in conversation with Rana Mitter

Sometimes it’s the consequences of disasters that are bigger than the disasters themselves. – Niall Ferguson

There are few big thinkers better placed to explain the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic than historian Niall Ferguson. In addition to his profound understanding of past crises, since early March he has been meticulously collating and analysing data about the one we are facing now – tracking how the pandemic began, how we got to where we are today and extrapolating what the future is likely to hold. In this special Intelligence Squared+ online event Ferguson will tackle the most pressing questions we all want answers to. Which of the world’s governments got their reaction to the virus right – those with the more or the less stringent measures? What chances are there of a strong economic recovery in the foreseeable future? Will we find a vaccine soon and enter the ‘post-Covid world’ or are we likely to be living (and dying) with the virus for years to come? Will tensions between China and the US escalate still further, leading us into a Cold War II?

The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power by Niall Ferguson is available to order from Waterstones.

Event Name

Niall Ferguson On What History Can Teach Us About Covid-19

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Speakers for the motion

  • Niall Ferguson

    One of the UK’s most renowned historians and his latest book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Chair

  • Rana Mitter

    Historian, author and broadcaster

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

Speaker

Niall Ferguson

One of the UK’s most renowned historians and his latest book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe

Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-winning filmmaker, too, having received an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His 2018 book, The Square and the Tower, was a New York Times bestseller and was also adapted for television by PBS as Niall Ferguson’s Networld. In 2020 he joined Bloomberg Opinion as a columnist. In addition, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of Ualá (a Latin American financial technology company), and a trustee of the New York Historical Society, the London-based Centre for Policy Studies, and the newly founded University of Austin. His latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, was published in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He is currently writing Kissinger, 1969-2023: The Player and is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
Chair

Rana Mitter

Historian, author and broadcaster

S.T. Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He was previously the director of the University China Centre at the University of Oxford, where he was Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China. His recent documentary on contemporary Chinese politics ‘Meanwhile in Beijing’ is available on BBC Sounds, and his writing on contemporary China has appeared recently in Foreign Affairs, the Harvard Business Review, The Spectator, The Critic, and The Guardian. His latest book is China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism.

 

Speakers are subject to change.