Walter E. Williams

This article is about the economist and commentator. For other people named Walter Williams, see Walter Williams (disambiguation).

Walter E. Williams
Born	(1936-03-31) March 31, 1936 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nationality	United States
Academic career
Field	Economics, Education, Politics, Free Market, Race relations, Liberty
Institution	George Mason University (1980–present) Temple University Los Angeles City College (1972–1974) California State University, Los Angeles (1969–1970) Grove City College
School or tradition	Economist
Alma mater	California State University, Los Angeles (B.A.) 1965 UCLA (M.A.) 1967 University of California, Los Angeles Ph.D. 1972
Influences	Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Ayn Rand

Walter E. Williams, (born March 31, 1936) is an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.

Early life and education

Williams grew up in "Philadelphia’s Richard Allen housing projects, where his neighbors included a young Bill Cosby."

Williams holds a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University, Los Angeles (1965) and a master's degree (1967). He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972. Since being a graduate student at UCLA, he has been a friend of fellow African American economist and columnist Thomas Sowell. Correspondence between Sowell and Williams appears in the 2007 "A Man of Letters" by Sowell.

Williams served as a Private in the United States Army prior to obtaining his bachelor's degree. While serving in the Army, he "waged a one man battle against Jim Crow from inside the army (where he was nearly court-martialed for challenging the racial order)." Williams:

wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism of the American government and military. “Should Negroes be relieved of their service obligation or continue defending and dying for empty promises of freedom and equality,” Williams demanded of the president. "Or should we demand human rights as our Founding Fathers did at the risk of being called extremists....I contend that we relieve ourselves of oppression in a manner that is in keeping with the great heritage of our nation.”

Academic career

Williams has been a Professor of Economics at George Mason University since 1980, and was chairman of the University's Economics department from 1995 to 2001.

He has previously been on the faculty of Los Angeles City College, California State University – Los Angeles, Temple University, and Grove City College. Williams was awarded an honorary degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquin.

Writing career

Williams has written eight books and hundreds of articles. His syndicated column is published weekly in approximately 140 newspapers across the United States, as well as on several web sites by Creators Syndicate.

Economic and political views

Reason has called Williams "one of the country’s leading libertarian voices." In 2009, Greg Ransom, a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, ranked Williams as the third most important "Hayekian" Public Intellectual in America, behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel.

As an economist, Williams often speaks and writes in favor of free market economics and against socialist systems and government intervention. He "is perhaps best known for his rigorous, fact-based argument that the free market is a force for racial equality." Williams has said "That's a challenge I love: making economics fun and understandable." He has also said: "I praise lassez-faire capitalism as being the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised. Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man."

Williams supports legalization of selling one's own bodily organs on the grounds that it increases the supply of organs for transplant. He also makes the libertarian argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not he/she has the right to sell it. If selling organs is illegal, he says, then, consequently, individuals do not own their own bodies.

He is also a critic of the minimum wage and affirmative action, believing that both practices are detrimental to both blacks and liberty. Williams has penned a number of pieces detailing his view that minimum wage increases are harmful to low-skill workers. Williams especially emphasizes his belief that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community and do not adequately explain the situation blacks face today.

Holding libertarian viewpoints, Williams criticizes gun control as endangering the innocent and failing to reduce crime. Williams opposes anti-discrimination laws in the private sector on the libertarian grounds of freedom of association.

He has gone on record as advocating the Free State Project in at least two columns and once on television. The Williams endorsement correlated with the largest single membership jump in the first 5000 phase of the project, a jump even higher than the results of the project being Slashdotted. He also believes in the right of U.S. states to secede from the union as several states attempted to do during the Civil War. Williams has supported or been sympathetic toward various secessionist ideas in his writings. "As I got a little older I had it mostly polished when I was in college in terms of the ideas of liberty. And also I must have read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense I don’t know how many times. At least twenty-thirty times, and that kind of instilled some radical ideas in me as Thomas Paine was trying to instill in the colonists. Affirmative action has led to, I believe, many Black people expecting favors from the system and not working as hard as they otherwise would, that is if you know that you can get into college because of affirmative action—or some people call it diversity nowadays—well then why work as hard in high school? So it might undermine some of the spirit of people. And I think that the basic premise of those who advocate affirmative action is that the problems that Black Americans face today are the result of racial discrimination."

In reaction to the racial hyper-sensitivity he saw in higher education, in the 1970's Williams started offering white colleagues a gag certificate of amnesty and pardon to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks - and "thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry." He now offers it to anyone through his website.

In his work, Williams builds on the economics of the previously mentioned Thomas Sowell, as well as those of Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt, and he has described Ayn Rand's Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal as "one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read." Williams frequently fills in as host on the Rush Limbaugh radio program when Limbaugh is traveling.

Non-profit activities

Williams serves on the boards of a number of non-profit organizations, including the Bruin Alumni Association.

Presidential draft campaign

Cartoonist Bruce Tinsley, in his comic strip Mallard Fillmore, launched a campaign to draft Williams for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2008 United States presidential election. Although Williams initially stated that he wouldn't completely rule out the possibility, he ultimately decided against such a run, and endorsed Ron Paul.

Personal life

Williams and his wife Connie were married from 1960 until her death on December 29, 2007. They have one daughter, Devyn, who resides in Los Angeles, California. Williams is a cousin of former NBA player Julius Erving.

In 2011, Dr. Williams retired from the board of directors of Media General. He served on the board of directors from 2001-2011 and was chairman of the Audit Committee.

Books

• America: a Minority Viewpoint (1982) ISBN 0-8179-7562-4
• The State Against Blacks (1984) ISBN 0-07-070378-7
• All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View (1988) ISBN 0-89526-569-9
• South Africa's War Against Capitalism (1989) ISBN 0-275-93179-X
• Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks (1995) ISBN 0-8179-9382-7
• More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (1999) ISBN 0-8179-9612-5
• Liberty versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays (2008) ISBN 0-8179-4912-9
• Up from the Projects: An Autobiography (2010) ISBN 0-8179-1254-1
• Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? (2011) ISBN 978-0-8179-1244-4

See also

• List of economists

External links

• Walter Williams Home Page at GMU
  • Biography
• Walter Williams Features at Creators Syndicate
• Syndicated articles (at townhall.com) (rss feed)(at Jewish World Review)
• Podcasts of Williams' recent articles
• Podcast featuring Williams Williams discusses economics and life on EconTalk.
• Audio interview with Walter E. Williams at National Review Online
• Walter Williams Quotes
• Biography and List of Articles written by Walter Williams at Capitalism Magazine
• Economics for the Citizen
• His Introduction (pdf) to Choosing the Right College
• Walter E. Williams Lectures from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
• An Interview with Dr. Walter E. Williams at Free Market Mojo