> A century later, American academia has gone in the opposite political direction—leftward instead of rightward—but has ended up in much the same place. The question is whether we—unlike the Germans—can do something about it.

Even when it would be most apt, writers just can't bring themselves to draw parallels with the Soviet Union, can they?

I feel like Ferguson went off the rails around 2000. I felt he was a pretty good thinker but but after the September 2001 attacks in the US his analyses seemed less robust, and since moving to the US seems to have just abandoned his analytic technique completely.