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The 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress report, also known as The Nation's Report Card, shows that U.S. educational achievement, to put it nicely, leaves much to be desired. When it comes to reading and math skills, just 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively, of U.S. eighth-grade students tested proficient or above -- that is, performed at grade level or above. Recent test scores show poor achievement levels in other academic areas. Only 18 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in U.S. history. It's 27 percent in geography and 23 percent in civics. The story is not much better when it...

Editor's Note: This column was authored by Walter Williams' daughter, Devon Williams. In the late 1980s, when telemarketing was at it is peak, a company called our home during dinner. I picked up the phone and handed it to my dad. This is what we heard him say: "I'm not interested." "No. No, thank you." "Well ... I'm not ever going to die." And then he hung up. My mom and I looked at each other, and then him, with looks of incredulity. He explained that it was a company selling life insurance. For a long time, I believed just...

Editor's Note: Walter Williams passed away last Wednesday. You can read our tribute to him here.One of the first lessons in an economics class is every action has a cost. That is in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians virtually ignore cost and talk about benefits and free stuff. If we look only at the benefits of an action, policy, or program, then we will do anything because there is a benefit to any action, policy, or program. Think about one simple example. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 36,096 Americans lost their lives...

Walter E. Williams, a prominent conservative economist, author and political commentator who expressed profoundly skeptical views of government efforts to aid his fellow African-Americans and other minority groups, died on Tuesday on the campus of George Mason University in Virginia, where he had taught for 40 years. He was 84.His daughter, Devon Williams, said he died suddenly in his car after he had finished teaching a class. She said he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension.As a public intellectual, Mr. Williams moved easily between the classroom and public forums that gave him wide reach. He wrote a syndicated column,...

Walter Williams loved teaching. Unlike too many other teachers today, he made it a point never to impose his opinions on his students. Those who read his syndicated newspaper columns know that he expressed his opinions boldly and unequivocally there. But not in the classroom. Walter once said he hoped that, on the day he died, he would have taught a class that day. And that is just the way it was, when he died on Wednesday, December 2, 2020. He was my best friend for half a century. There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I...

Source: Screenshot/Facebook via Hammond Institute for Free EnterpriseWalter Williams, the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University and longtime columnist, has died at the age of 84.Williams began writing a weekly column, "A Minority View," in 1981, the last of which, titled "Black Education Tragedy Is New," published Wednesday. His columns have appeared on Townhall.com for more than 25 years. He is also the author of 10 books, including the most recent, "Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?" and "Up from the Projects: An Autobiography," and published more than 150 scholarly articles,...

Paul Kengor is a professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. He has just published "The Devil and Karl Marx," a careful look at the diabolical side of Karl Marx. The book has come out during an important time in our history since so many Americans, particularly our youth, have fallen for the seductive siren song of socialism taught to them by the academic elite. "The Black Book of Communism," edited by Stephane Courtois, details the Marxist-Leninist death toll in the 20th century. Here is the breakdown: USSR, 20 million deaths; China, 65 million; Vietnam,...

I doubt whether any American would defend the police treatment of George Floyd that led to his death. But many Americans are supporting some of the responses to Floyd's death – rioting, looting, wanton property destruction, assaults on police and other kinds of mayhem by both whites and blacks. The pretense is that police conduct stands as the root of black problems. According to the NAACP, from 1882-1968, there were 3,446 black people lynched at the hands of whites. Today, being murdered by whites or policemen should be the least of black worries. In recent times, there is an average...

Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam will have much to apologize for if he signs into law a bill that attacks Virginia citizens' Second Amendment rights. The measure is Senate Bill 16, which would ban "assault" firearms and certain firearm magazines. Since Democrats have seized control of Virginia's General Assembly in the last election, they are likely to push hard for strict gun control laws. Those laws will have zero impact on Virginia's criminals and a heavy impact on Virginia's law-abiding citizens who own, or intend to own, semi-automatic weapons for hunting or their protection. As a friend once explained to...

The favorite leftist tool for the attack on our nation's founding is that slavery was sanctioned. They argue that the founders disregarded the promises of our Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These very ignorant people, both in and out of academia, want us to believe that slavery is unusual, as historian Kenneth Stampp suggested in his book, "Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South." But slavery is by no means peculiar, odd, unusual or...

Reading about all the young ignorant, uneducated, “millennials” who proudly label themselves “socialists” or “social justice warriors” (same thing) reminded me of a question posed by my old friend Professor Walter E. Williams in a speech he gave at my university several years ago. The question is: What would you call a system that used force, violence, coercion, and intimidation to compel one person to work for the benefit of another person or persons? Whenever I ask this of one of my undergraduate classes it usually takes about five seconds for someone to blurt out, “slavery!” Exactly. The class then...

Much is made about observed differences between sexes and among races. The nation’s academic and legal elite try to sell us on the notion that men and women and people of all races should be proportionally represented in socio-economic characteristics. They make statements such as “Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32 percent of the U.S. population, they (constituted) 56 percent of all incarcerated people in 2015” and “20 percent of Congress is women. Only 5 percent of CEOs are.” These differences are frequently referred to as disparities. Legal professionals, judges, politicians, academics and others often operate under...

Over the past several decades, the left has convinced United States citizens that it is the only option for black and other minority voters. If any blacks dare to deviate from this narrative, they get labeled as an “Uncle Tom” or worse. Fortunately, for the benefit of America’s black community, many black intellectuals have risen to prominence who challenge the left’s perceived ownership of the black vote. And while I do not think the color of someone’s skin matters when seeking truth, these intellectuals provide a perspective and persuasive ability that can’t be matched by others. Thomas Sowell Perhaps one...

I don't mind saying that this column represents a grossly understated review of "Discrimination and Disparities," just published by my longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell. In less than 200 pages, Sowell lays waste to myth after myth not only in the United States but around the globe. One of those myths is that but for the fact of discrimination, we'd all be proportionately represented in socio-economic characteristics, such as career, income, education and incarceration. The fact of business is that there is no evidence anywhere on earth, at any time in human history, that demonstrates that but for...

A frequent point I have made in past columns has been about the educational travesty happening on many college campuses. Some people have labeled my observations and concerns as trivial, unimportant and cherry-picking. While the spring semester awaits us, let's ask ourselves whether we'd like to see repeats of last year's antics. An excellent source for college news is Campus Reform, a conservative website operated by the Leadership Institute (https://www.campusreform.org). Its reporters are college students. Here is a tiny sample of last year's bizarre stories. Donna Riley, a professor at Purdue University's School of Engineering Education, published an article in...

RUSH: This will be a great opportunity to delve into the Walter Williams column that I referred to earlier. It’s got nothing to do with the NFL. I mean, that’s not why he wrote it. It comes from way back on September 20th, about a week ago, and the title of his column… Where did this run? The link is so tiny, I can’t read it. It looks like the Daily Signal. “The Black Family Is Struggling, and It’s Not Because of Slavery.” Now, Walter Williams is a former guest host here. He’s brilliant guy, very conservative individual. Let me...

Our college-age population consists mostly of 18- to 30-year-olds, and likewise our armed forces. I wonder whether they shared common responses to the 2016 presidential election. Many college administrators provided students with therapy dogs, play dough, coloring books, bubbles, videos of frolicking kittens and puppies, and soft music. They even canceled classes and postponed exams so that their 18- to 30-year-old snowflakes could better cope with the election results. There are numerous internet photos and videos of these youngsters screaming and in outright grief and panic. Here's my question: Were our military leaders as accommodating as college administrators? Did commanding...

In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Population." He predicted that mankind's birthrate would outstrip our ability to grow food and would lead to mass starvation. Malthus' wrong predictions did not deter Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich from making a similar prediction. In his 1968 best-seller, "The Population Bomb," which has sold more than 2 million copies, Ehrlich warned: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." This hoax resulted in billions...

What about inclusiveness in dating? Would academics criticize people who expressed a desire to date only people of their own race? Would they criticize people who openly refused to date someone of the same sex? Would the "inclusiveness and diversity" people condemn or sanction same-race marriages? In other words, what limits would they impose to bring about inclusiveness and diversity?

We will never understand liberals and progressives until we recognize that they often see reality as a social construct subject to being challenged and changed. For example, throughout the world, boys and girls have different toy preferences. Typically, boys like to play with cars and trucks, whereas girls prefer dolls. Liberals explain this with the assertion that boys and girls are socialized and encouraged to play with different types of toys by their parents, peers and "society." Growing scientific evidence suggests that toy preferences have a biological origin. Even studies of male and female primates find that they exhibit similar...