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About Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. As with many others in his neighborhood, he left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University, worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics.
After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), he went on to receive his master's in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968).
In the early '60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University, he began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments include Rutgers University, Amherst University, Brandeis University and the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught in the early '70s and also from 1984 to 1989. Sowell has published a large volume of writing.
His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college. Moreover, much of his writing is considered ground-breaking -- work that will outlive the great majority of scholarship done today. Vision of the Anointed, published in 1995, appeared on best-seller lists in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and USA Today.
Though Sowell had been a regular contributor to newspapers in the late '70s and early '80s, he did not begin his career as a newspaper columnist until 1984. George F. Will's writing, says Sowell, proved to him that someone could say something of substance in so short a space (750 words). And besides, writing for the general public enables him to address the heart of issues without the smoke and mirrors that so often accompany academic writing.
In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by The American Enterprise Institute. Currently, Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.
Please contact your local newspaper editor if you want to read the THOMAS SOWELL column in your hometown paper.
Articles by Thomas Sowell
Random Thoughts: October 2009 (October 6, 2009)
The way Hollywood elites have sprung to the defense of Roman Polanski to keep him from being extradited to the United States, despite the heinous crime he is accused of, suggests that-- like other egalitarians-- they consider those who are "one of us" to be more equal than others.
A Letter from a Child (October 5, 2009)
While our children are frittering away time on trivia, other children in other countries are acquiring the skills in math, science or other fields that will allow them to take the jobs our children will meed when they grow up.
The Brainy Bunch (September 28, 2009)
Politically brilliant and charismatic leaders, promoting reckless government spending-- of whom Juan Peron was the most prominent, but by no means alone-- managed to create an economic disaster in a country with an abundance of natural resources and a country that was spared the stresses that wars inflicted on other nations in the 20th century.
Choosing The Right College (September 22, 2009)
What is important is choosing the right college for you.
The Underdogs (September 21, 2009)
Many people would consider it a handicap to be a black orphan, born in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Health Insurance Fables for Adults (September 14, 2009)
As someone who lived through that era, and who spent decades without medical insurance, I find it hard to be panicked and stampeded into bigger and worse problems because some people do not have medical insurance, including many who could afford it if they chose to.
Obama: Listening to a Liar, Part II (September 8, 2009)
Barack Obama's insistence that various dangerous policies are not in the legislation he proposes sounds good but means nothing. Unbridled power is a blank check, no matter what its rationale may be.
Obama: Listening to a Liar, Part I (September 6, 2009)
One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!
Suicide of the West? (September 1, 2009)
In ways large and small, domestically and internationally, the West is surrendering on the installment plan to Islamicists.
The Great Escape (August 25, 2009)
The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one's own behavior.
The Obama Vision: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part IV (August 19, 2009)
The thing most associated with America-- freedom-- is precisely what must be destroyed if this is to be turned into a fundamentally different country to suit Obama's vision of the country and of himself.
Obama's "Bait and Switch": Whose Medical Decisions?: Part III (August 19, 2009)
Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance?
Obamacare's Phony Arguments: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part II (August 18, 2009)
One of the many phony arguments for government-controlled medical care is that Americans do not have any longer life expectancy than in other countries, despite much higher medical expenditures.
Obama Cronies vs. American Citizens: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part I (August 17, 2009)
The current "health care" bill threatens to take life-and-death decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors, transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats.
Random Thoughts for August 2009 (August 11, 2009)
Since no one seems overly concerned about putting a racist on the Supreme Court-- provided it is a politically correct racist-- the moral of the story seems to be that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, that doesn't matter if it coos like a dove at Senate confirmation hearings.
Utopia Versus Freedom (August 4, 2009)
Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom.
Disaster in the Making (July 29, 2009)
Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.
A Post-Racial President? (July 27, 2009)
Those who were shocked at President Obama's cheap shot at the Cambridge police for being "stupid" in arresting Henry Louis Gates must have been among those who let their wishes prevail over the obvious implications of Obama's 20 years of association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Anyone who can believe that Obama did not understand what the racist rants of Jeremiah Wright meant can believe anything.
Obama's Magical News Conference for Socialized Medicine (July 23, 2009)
Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics.
Medical Care Confusion (July 20, 2009)
Nothing is easier than for governments to impose price controls. They have been doing this, off an on, for thousands of years-- repeatedly resulting in (1) shortages, (2) quality deterioration and (3) black markets. Why would anyone want any of those things when it comes to medical care?
A Personal Inequity: Me and Michael Jordan (July 13, 2009)
The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward.
A Tangled Web: "Disparate Impact" Dogma (Part 2) (July 7, 2009)
The biggest beneficiaries from the "disparate impact" dogma are those who claim to be helping minorities. They benefit by feeling noble, winning votes or attracting money. The actual consequences for blacks-- or for the polarization of American society-- seems to be of little concern.
A Tangled Web: "Disparate Impact" Dogma (Part 1) (July 6, 2009)
The recent Supreme Court's decision in the New Haven firefighters' case was a rare example of sanity prevailing, even if only by a vote of 5 to 4.
Judge Sotomayor's "Qualifications" (July 1, 2009)
Judge Sotomayor's performance provides no reason for putting her on the Supreme Court.
Alice in Obama Medical Care Land (June 30, 2009)
Most political and media discussions of medical care have an air of unreality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. There is an abundance of catch-phrases but remarkably few coherent arguments.
College Education: To Much of a "Good Thing"? (June 28, 2009)
Given the composition of the population as it is-- which is always what we have to start with-- what evidence is there that too few or too many are going to college?
Republicans in the Wilderness (June 23, 2009)
Ronald Reagan won two elections in a landslide by being Ronald Reagan-- and, most important of all-- explaining to a broad electorate how what he advocated would be best for them and for the country.
Sonia Sotomayor: Equality or Pay-back? (June 19, 2009)
The current Supreme Court nominee is the first in decades to explicitly introduce racial differences in their own words, along with the claim that their own racial or ethnic background makes them better qualified.
The Character of Nations (June 9, 2009)
Government policies are not only affected by the culture of the country but can in turn have a major impact on that culture, for good or ill.
Varieties of Nothing (June 8, 2009)
The criminal justice system is not the only arena in which doing nothing is often common-- and often gets complicated. On the international stage, the great arena for doing nothing is the United Nations.
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