Honestly with Bari Weiss Niall Ferguson on October 7 and Our Changed World
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Oct 8, 2025 
Niall Ferguson, a prominent historian and senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, provides insightful commentary on the events of October 7 and their lasting repercussions. He draws alarming parallels between today's campus culture and 1930s Germany, highlighting how elite institutions can propagate radical ideas. Ferguson critiques the distortion of victimhood in protests and evaluates Israel's military strategies amidst rising global antisemitism. He also discusses the challenges posed by authoritarian states like China and the risks of declining literacy in critical thinking.
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Second Holocaust Became Thinkable
- October 7 revealed that a second Holocaust or annihilation of Israel felt more plausible to some than previously believed.
- Niall Ferguson links the scale and sexual violence of the attack to intent to eradicate Jews or the Israeli state.
Universities Can Spread Radicalism
- Elite universities can propagate radical ideas rather than inoculate against them, mirroring Weimar Germany.
- Ferguson argues academic credentialing and ideology helped legitimize extremist doctrines before they became policy.
Campus Shift Against Israel
- Many elite U.S. universities rapidly turned public sympathies against Israel after October 7.
- Ferguson sees curricular bias and external funding as drivers that shaped student mobilization and narratives.
