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. 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 Institute in Stanford, Calif. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell http://media.townhall.com/TownHall/icons/TH-feed-icon-128x128.gif http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell TownHall.com, Where your opinion counts. 128 Copyright (c) 2008 Townhall.com, A Salem Communications Web. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED jim.dearras@townhall.com (Jim De Arras) Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ The Fourth of July is a patriotic holiday but patriotism has long been viewed with suspicion or disdain by many of the intelligentsia. As far back as 1793, prominent British writer William Godwin called patriotism... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/07/02/does_patriotism_matter 596d9075-8877-4ddd-8a1c-3196b0d4af94 Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT Recent landmark court decisions are reminders that elections are not just about putting candidates in office for a few years. The judges that elected officials put on the bench can remake the legal landscape, change... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/07/01/high-stakes_courts 5b15caca-966b-430a-85ac-0175be8f8be5 Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/26/the_imitators_part_iii e92aec7e-2b83-40fd-8864-5b0912dd46a6 Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT It must be a bitter disappointment to those in the media and in politics who have been dying to use the word "recession" that, for the second quarter in a row, there has been no downturn in the economy, though... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/25/the_imitators_part_ii 30f01eeb-38d6-43a6-ba8e-b19c7d17af97 Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion. Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/24/the_imitators 16a45879-d13d-49a7-b896-4cd7a078a198 Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT Only with Tim Russert's sudden death at the age of 58 has his true stature as a landmark journalist become as widely recognized as it has long deserved to be. To ask who will replace him as host of "Meet the Press"... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/18/tim_russert_1950-2008 a4335850-2e8f-424e-a332-855308f0240d Wed, 18 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT The obsession of many high school students and their parents about getting into a prestige college or university is part of the social scene of our time. So is the experience of parents going deep into hock to... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/17/is_prestige_worth_it 185eebe9-2d5f-4419-a755-58b4033bfb40 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats' nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/10/cocky_ignorance bb99cea8-9998-4446-802b-3ab1fa095014 Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober-- if not grim-- assessment of where we are. Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/05/obama_and_mccain e7407c93-0b21-4a56-873d-5d74b56643ef Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT It is amazing how seriously the media are taking Senator Barack Obama's latest statement about the latest racist rant from the pulpit of the church he has attended for 20 years. But neither that statement nor the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/03/irrelevant_apologies 3d4452fc-7188-4d44-8ac5-e42fdd62bdd5 Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:01:00 GMT "Killing an Unarmed Man." That is how the front-page headline in the New York Times characterized an incident in which a man tried to run over a policeman with his car and was shot by three policemen on the scene,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/05/28/the_bullet_counters 14e37f56-28d0-4f29-b08a-aa1ac0f925d0 Wed, 28 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT Years ago, when Jack Greenberg left the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to become a professor at Columbia University, he announced that he was going to make it a point to hire a black secretary at Columbia. This would of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/05/27/mascot_politics 21c15278-8d46-4113-8abc-c14078cf8f79 Tue, 27 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT Some parents who are concerned about their children receiving a steady diet of liberal-left indoctrination in schools and colleges regard the summer vacation as a time to show these young people a different way of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/05/21/summer_reading a42d977a-1c95-4977-863f-6a60c7b19c71 Wed, 21 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT Random thoughts on the passing scene: Seeing the Pope driven around in a bullet-proof vehicle reminds me of how much times have changed over the years. I can remember when President Franklin D. Roosevelt rode through... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/05/20/random_thoughts 7b7c1aaf-53e2-441d-b981-e26a2618f570 Tue, 20 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT In one of those typical San Francisco decisions that makes San Francisco a poster child for the liberal left, the city's Board of Supervisors is moving to block a paint store from renting a vacant building once used... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/05/15/too_complex_part_iii 98aa1005-06cd-4f13-aa01-e9ef9f716ed2 Thu, 15 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT