Brad DeLong: Maybe It’s Not All About the Speaking Fees
Posted on August 24th, 2012 in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »
The Berkeley economist rejects Stephen Marche’s argument that Niall Ferguson only says what he says in order to better sell himself to the fatcats who can pay his $75, 000 speaking fee:
Misrepresenting facts and selective editing, DeLong argues, isn’t the best way to promote yourself as a speaker:
It’s a way to get your peers to shift from saying “he is highly entertaining and has a definite point of view that will wake you up” to “he will tell you some things that just aren’t so: you can use your money better on somebody else”.
Contrary to what Stephen Marche says, this kind of misrepresentation is not a good career move on Ferguson’s part-not even with the shortest-run speaking-fee-maximization definition of “career”…
But perhaps it’s more subtle than this: Perhaps the process of self-corruption is a long and gradual one, as you increasingly become aware of what the people paying those outrageous fees like to hear, and your thought gradually hews closer and closer to that perspective…until you actually cross the line and go further than your patrons would like. (After all, the Tea Party People aren’t going to shell out 75 grand for NF to come talk.)
11 Responses
8/24/2012 7:14 pm
It’s not so much what he says-because we believe in freedom of speech, and the thoughts he expresses may well be his real opinions-as the opportunity to earn substantial fees for these speeches. We all give talks to academic audiences, but there we don’t earn as much (the ordinary academic might earn about $500 for a talk, plus travel and accommodation expenses), and in those talks we’re expected to make an original contribution to scholarship. It’s not just a matter of shaking some ideas out of one’s sleeve: it takes quite a bit of preparatory work to create a ship-shape academic talk. For these other non-academic talks, each of which brings in a huge amount of extra money, Ferguson seems to think he doesn’t need to do work that meets academic standards. As long as he can get away with it in front of the audiences that invite him, the temptation to continue will be great. My question is: do you think he has already gone “further than his patrons would like”?
8/24/2012 7:55 pm
Here are a couple of (Harvard) relevant comments from Brad Delong’s blog:
mercurino said…
As others have pointed out, Ferguson is interested in ingratiating himself to a certain audience. To that group, getting attacked by the “liberal media” is evidence that you are a “bold truth-teller” rather than a mendacious hack. The fact that he has the Harvard imprimatur only makes his challenge to “liberal elites” that much more compelling to his core audience. It is his ability to piss off liberals that will raise his speaking fees, not his ability to make thoughtful arguments. That Prof. DeLong doesn’t understand this is somewhat surprising.
Reply August 24, 2024 at 07:27 AM
Jeffrey Davis said…
Harvard can’t go on TV. As long as Ferguson uses his Harvard connection to add value to his speaking engagements, Harvard’s complicit in his crap.
Back to RT:
Can Harvard go on TV? Maybe not, but individuals at Harvard can, should, and probably will respond in the interests of our institution.
One of the regular posters here showed me NF’s website a year ago, at which point he was getting $45,000 for a lecture. In terms of his audience for the ACA cherry-picking garbage, let’s assume he doesn’t need to worry too much about staying on that lecture circuit.
Let’s further ask to whom he is talking and whether that person/those persons are too worried about “quibbling” over details. Ryan (for whom NF professes admiration, as he did for McCain four years ago) and Romney would be up there in any response. My guess is he’s betting (as he did with McCain) on a Republican win and looking to take a few years’ sabbatical from his Harvard pocket money gig.
8/24/2012 8:31 pm
There is a lot of schaudenfreude in this discussion.
Of course it is interesting that the differentials in what Harvard faculty can range as widely as to go from $500 per lecture to $75,000 per lecture. Why should NF be blamed for this gap any more than the faculty who can only command a $500 fee for a lecture requiring similar preparation and effort?
If there is some kind of a ‘market’ for the speaker fees that faculty can attract shouldn’t those fees be taken as a proxy for the marginal contribution made by the faculty member in question? the simplest explanation for all this may just be that NF is highly valued by his audiences, whereas those who command a $500 fee are, perhaps, not valued as much.
Clearly professors are not just about giving speeches, they are supposed to also make original contributions to scholarship, publishing books. NF has done quite a bit of that as well, and maybe the high fees he commands are a reflection that his audiences recognize and value that as well.
Shouldn’t Harvard be pleased to have on its payroll faculty that have such form of public recognition?
And, to NF’s point, would those who are opposing his actions be doing the same if we were discussing, say, Cornel West?
8/24/2012 9:11 pm
Anonymous, the point has more to do with the the lecturer’s suppression of facts so as to aid the political message one is trying to put out to a certain (non-academic) audience, and also has to do with whether one’s institution, which implicitly lends credibility to the message, and is implicated in ways that are troubling and need attention.
This sort of goes against the principle that truth (veritas in the language of my discipline) should be the ultimate aim of all we do at universities, including those that use the word as their motto.
Which is not to say we can’t also consult, entertain, even get paid by the Boston DA to watch Caligula, as once happened with me, and do so at market rates. But I was expected to give my views, based on my expertise, of that film’s socially and historically redeeming value.
Forget the $$ thing, which is a distraction, except that the disparity shows that Prof. Ryan’s (and my) lectures are generally in an academic setting, with questions and discussion from colleagues, graduate students, etc. where one wouldn’t dream of either a) wilfully distorting evidence or b) pretending to expertise one didn’t have.
Btw, the Mahindra Humanities Center seminar I cochair would need to encumber the next 30 yrs of our budget to have the one full NF performance. I mention this just to elaborate on the preceding paragraph.
I think Cornel West’s lectures, overcompensated I thought at the time-also schadenfreude (no extra “u” there btw)?–were mostly in academic settings. Summers didn’t like that Cornel, like me, was for Bradley rather than Gore in the Dem. primary in 2000, but I’d be surprised if Bradley or Bradley’s backers paid him a dime.
8/24/2012 9:41 pm
PS
I think you mean Eifersucht or Missgunst, not Scadenfreude.
8/24/2012 9:45 pm
Schadenfreude that is.
8/24/2012 9:59 pm
Is it worth arguing with a shadow who assets that the social value of an idea can be measured by the amount of money someone will pay you to say it?
Cf. my quotation from the beautiful Prof. Thurston 2 posts earlier.
8/24/2012 10:05 pm
Probably not, Harry, but semper hic erro. The Thurston quote was indeed beautiful, so thanks for that!
8/25/2012 11:00 am
I’m sorry that my comment sounded like an expression of jealousy. I actually prefer to give academic talks and learn from the discussion that follows. The honoraria are a nice thing, and one for which I’m grateful, but I agree with RT that the sums of money involved are not relevant to my argument (except insofar as big money can present a big temptation). What matters is the soundness of the points the speaker makes in his or her talk.
8/25/2012 12:06 pm
I didn’t mean to imply that, Judith, rather that is what Anon meant. I quite agree with your point, which is as it should be for an academic.
8/25/2012 8:23 pm
RT, what in the text above would make you think that Anon meant jealousy? Have you read S. Freud letters to Whilhel Fleiss? see Draft H under mechanisms of defense. A. Freud perfected the conceptualization of this particular mechanism through which a person denies their own feelings by ascribing them to another.