Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where Williams long served as the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, wrote today about her celebrated colleague's passing.

“The great economist and freedom fighter Walter Williams has died. This is incredibly sad news," she wrote. "Walter was a great communicator of ideas and a prolific, provocative and uncompromising writer. … His voice, his happy-warrior demeanor, his cosmopolitan views, his endless fight on behalf of those with no political voices, and his generosity to all of us at Mason will be missed." ...