Sir Niall Ferguson
The John R. Donnell Memorial Lecture
In an age soon to be dominated by AI, a world where ascendant economic powers threaten America’s global dominance, and at a time when the U.S. seeks to step back from the global stage, Sir Niall Ferguson returns to Palm Beach to discuss the next financial crisis and what lies ahead for the global financial system.
Sir Niall is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is the author of 15 bestselling books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, The Square and the Tower, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign
Relations Arthur Ross Prize. His most recent (2021) is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe. He is an award-making filmmaker, having won an international Emmy for his PBS series “The Ascent of Money.” Many other prizes include the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012) and the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013). In addition to writing a syndicated weekly column which appears in the Sunday Times (London), the Boston Globe and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle, an advisory firm.
The John R. Donnell Memorial Lecture
The John R. Donnell Memorial Lecture was established in 2001 by long-time Four Arts trustee Maureen Donnell in memory of her late husband John Donnell. Mr. Donnell was a great supporter of the arts and a member of The Four Arts Board of Trustees. He was a graduate and trustee of Case Western Reserve University and a graduate of Harvard Business School. He was president of international relations and a senior vice president at the Marathon Oil Company. Mr. Donnell served 25 years as president and chairman of the First National Bank of Findlay, Ohio, and was a board member of the Boy Scouts of America and the World Boy Scout Foundation.