SCOTS academic Niall Ferguson has apologised for "stupid and tactless" remarks he made about economist John Maynard Keynes, after suggesting his philosophy was flawed because he was gay and childless.
Ferguson, a darling of the right, was giving a speech at the 10th Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, California, to an audience of 500 financial advisers and investors on Thursday, when he was asked about Keynes – who is often disliked by the right for his support of government intervention in the economy.
The Glasgow-born academic, who is the Laurence A Tisch professor of history at Harvard University, reportedly offended some members of the audience by describing Keynes as "effete", adding he was a homosexual and married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated.
Yesterday, Ferguson said: "I apologise deeply and unreservedly for stupid and tactless remarks about Keynes that I made on Thursday."
The reports sparked a backlash, with the historian accused of insulting gay and childless people.
Tom Kostigen, editor at large of Private Wealth and Financial Advisor magazines who first reported the speech, said: "This takes gay-bashing to new heights. It even perversely pins the full weight of the financial crisis on the gay community and the barren."
Keynes advocated that governments should spend their way out of recessions with stimulus programmes.
However, Ferguson has consistently rejected this thesis.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article