Civil Rights & Race

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Featured Research
Featured Commentary
Publications
Research Team
Fellows
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Featured Research

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Books

Discrimination and Disparities

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Articles

Intellectuals and Race

March 12, 2013 By Thomas Sowell

via Basic Books

aIntellectuals and Race by Hoover senior fellow Thomas Sowell.

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Books

Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country

February 24, 2015 By Shelby Steele

via Basic Books

Featured Commentary

Articles

The Case For Black Patriotism

April 19, 2021 By Glenn Loury

via City Journal

Articles

Unspeakable Truths About Racial Inequality In America

December 28, 2021 By Glenn Loury

via The Washington Examiner

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Articles

Why I Don't Capitalize "Black"

To capitalize “black” or not to capitalize “black”? Here at the newsletter, we have obviously made the decision not to do so. But it took a lot of deliberation and searching to come to that…

March 8, 2022 By Glenn Loury

via Glenn Loury

Articles

The Inauthenticity Behind Black Lives Matter

November 22, 2020 By Shelby Steele

via The Wall Street Journal

Articles

The Right And The Moral High Ground

March 31, 2019 By Shelby Steele

via The Wall Street Journal

Fellows in this Policy Area

Shelby Steele

Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow (adjunct)

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Shelby Steele

Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover fellow in 1994. Steele has written widely on race in American society and the consequences of contemporary social programs on race relations. In 2006, Steele received the Bradley Prize for his contributions to the study of race in America. In 2004, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 1991, his work on the documentary Seven Days in Bensonhurst was recognized with an Emmy Award and two awards for television documentary writing—the Writer's Guild Award and the San Francisco Film Festival Award. Steele received the National Book Critic's Circle Award in 1990 in the general nonfiction category for his book The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (HarperCollins, 1998). Other books by Steele include Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country (Basic Books, 2015), A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win (Free Press, 2007), White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (HarperCollins, 2006) and A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America (HarperCollins, 1998). Steele has written extensively for major publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He is a contributing editor at Harper's magazine. He has also spoken before hundreds of groups and appeared on national current affairs news programs including Nightline and 60 Minutes. Steele is a member of the National Association of Scholars, the national board of the American Academy for Liberal Education, the University Accreditation Association, and the national board at the Center for the New American Community at the Manhattan Institute. Steele holds a PhD in English from the University of Utah, an MA in sociology from Southern Illinois University, and a BA in political science from Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Thomas Sowell

Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy

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Thomas Sowell

Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy

Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. He writes on economics, history, social policy, ethnicity, and the history of ideas. His most recent book, Discrimination and Disparities (2018), gathers a wide array of empirical evidence to challenge the idea that different economic outcomes can be explained by any one factor, be it discrimination, exploitation or genetics. His books on economics include Housing Boom and Bust (2009), Intellectuals and Society (2009), Applied Economics (2009), Economic Facts and Fallacies (2008), Basic Economics (2007), and Affirmative Action Around the World (2004). Other books on economics he has written include Classical Economics Reconsidered (1974), Say’s Law (1972), and Economics: Analysis and Issues (1971). On social policy, he has written Knowledge and Decisions (1980), Preferential Policies (1989), Inside American Education (1993), The Vision of the Anointed (1995), Barbarians Inside the Gates (1999), and The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999). On the history of ideas he has written Marxism (1985) and Conflict of Vision (1987). Sowell also wrote Late-Talking Children (1997). He has also written a monograph on law titled Judicial Activism Reconsidered, published by the Hoover Institution Press in 1989. His writings have also appeared in scholarly journals in economics, law, and other fields. Sowell’s current research focuses on cultural history in a world perspective, a subject on which he began to write a trilogy in 1982. The trilogy includes Race and Culture (1994), Migrations and Cultures (1996), and Conquests and Cultures (1998). Sowell's journalistic writings include a nationally syndicated column that appears in more than 150 newspapers from Boston to Honolulu. Some of these essays have been collected in book form, most recently in Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays published by the Hoover Institution Press in 2006. Over the past three decades, Sowell has taught economics at various colleges and universities, including Cornell, Amherst, and the University of California at Los Angeles, as well as the history of ideas at Brandeis University. He has also been associated with three other research centers, in addition to the Hoover Institution. He was project director at the Urban Institute, 1972-1974, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, 1976–77, and was an adjunct scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, 1975-76. Sowell was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2002. In 2003, Sowell received the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement. Sowell received his bachelor’s degree in economics (magna cum laude) from Harvard in 1958, his master’s degree in economics from Columbia University in 1959, and his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.

David L. Leal

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

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David L. Leal

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

David L. Leal is a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution and a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. His primary academic interest is Latino politics, and his work explores the political and policy implications of demographic change in the United States. He teaches classes on Latino politics, immigration policy, politics and religion, and the US Congress. He has written one book, edited eight volumes, and published over fifty articles in political science and other social science journals. He has been an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the office of a US senator, a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Japan, and an Associate Member at Nuffield College at Oxford University. He is a member of the editorial boards of Social Science Quarterly, Education Next, Nations & Nationalism, and Journal of School Choice, and he was elected to a three-year term (2019-2022) on the Council of the American Political Science Association.