Hacktacular

I don't have much to add about this incredibly hackish piece in Newsweek by Niall Ferguson.  James Fallows at The Atlantic has blasted both the content and it author, most effectively.  Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman also raised welts.

I have to confess to having held academics at elite places such as Harvard in high regard.  In my own field, most of them really are superstars, worthy of such admiration.  Clearly, as one moves to more subjective disciplines such as history, such distinctions become blurry.  This fellow has a long history of getting important things wrong in his articles, yet Harvard actively recruited him as the "Laurence Tisch Professor of History."  I will need to recalibrate my thinking on the relative quality of Harvard faculty.

Update:
Here's a nice summary of the whole Ferguson crap show, from John Cassidy at the New Yorker.