[1] Ferguson earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1950 and an MBA in 1951, both from Cornell University, where he also played competitive football, baseball, and track.

He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, assigned to a psychological warfare unit that wrote propaganda leaflets for dropping behind enemy lines.

He spent a year abroad in 1952–1953 at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines, researching East Asian systems of government.

He assumed the presidency just when the state government under Republican governor Thomas Meskill was demanding the university slash costs.

[6] Faculty and staff unionized in the early 1970s amid declining compensation rates compared to other research universities.

Ferguson opposed ultimately unsuccessful efforts by Governor Ella Grasso to consolidate all of Connecticut's public institutions of higher education under a single board of regents, which would have limited UConn's autonomy.

When students protesting racism, in violation of Connecticut law, peacefully occupied the Wilbur Cross Library, Ferguson sent in state police to evict the protestors, four of whom reported injuries and one of whom spent days in the infirmary.

The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP condemned Ferguson's heavy-handed response and demanded that charges against the protestors be dropped.

[6] Following his departure as UConn president in 1978, Ferguson served a five-year term as chief executive of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

[2] Starting in the 1990s, Ferguson authored several books, including Unconventional Wisdom: A Primer of Provocative Aphorisms (1999), Americana Against the Grain (1999), Tilting at Religion (2003), Sports in America (2004) and Traveling the Exotic (2005).