I'm saddened to write of the death of libertarian economist Walter E. Williams. He passed away Wednesday morning at the age of 84, less than a day after teaching a class at George Mason University, where he worked for 40 years and helped transform his department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. A popular syndicated columnist whose work appeared in over a hundred newspapers on a weekly basis, he was a long-time contributor to Reason and served as an emeritus trustee of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.
Williams was so libertarian that he refused to accept the term as a descriptor. I interviewed him in 2011 and asked him whether he saw himself as part of the libertarian movement to which he had contributed so much. No, he said. "I just do my own thing."
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