Walter Williams Columns category, Page 2

Is it important to have racial or sexual diversity in our fight against the covid-19 pandemic? Heather Mac Donald suggests that some think it might be in her City Journal article “Should Identity Politics Dictate Vaccine Research?” The funding priorities of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for...

Black politicians, civil rights leaders and their white liberal advocates have little or no interest in doing anything effective to deal with what’s no less than an education crisis among black students. In city after city with large black populations, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.,...

Former Barack Obama adviser Rahm Emanuel, during a recent interview, reminded us of his 2008 financial crisis quotation, “Never allow a crisis to go to waste.” The covid-19 pandemic has presented a wonderful opportunity for those of us who want greater control over our lives. Sadly, too many Americans have...

The Department of Education just released results of the quadrennial National Assessment of Educational Progress tests in U.S. history, civics and geography given in 2018 to thousands of American eighth-graders: “Grade 8 Students’ NAEP Scores Decline in Geography and U.S. History; Results in Civics Unchanged Since 2014.” The tests were...

One of the first lessons in an economics class is everything has a cost. That’s in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians talk about free stuff. In our personal lives, decision-making involves weighing costs against benefits. Businessmen make the same calculation if they want to stay...

America’s colleges are rife with corruption. The financial squeeze resulting from covid-19 offers opportunities for a bit of remediation. Let’s first let’s examine what might be the root of academic corruption, suggested by the title of a 2018 study, “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship.” The study was...