SMALL BALL

Stanford Fellow Suggested GOP Undergrads Conduct ‘Opposition Research’ on Progressive Student

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” Niall Ferguson wrote in an email.

A well-known pundit and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution conspired with undergraduate College Republicans to perform “opposition research” on a progressive student activist in an effort to “shore up support” for a series of talks with controversial speakers sponsored by Hoover, The Stanford Daily reported. Niall Ferguson resigned from the committee after the dean became “aware” of email exchanges between Ferguson and two college sophomores. In one of the emails, Ferguson wrote that “some opposition research” on the progressive activist—who is also a sophomore—might be “worthwhile.” “Now we turn to the more subtle game of grinding them down on the committee. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” he wrote in another email. Ferguson told The Daily that he “very much regret[s] the publication of these emails” and “also regret[s] having written them.”