Charles Murray Journalist Profile

Articles

The Amy Wax Affair

Oct 1, 2024 | quillette.com | Charles Murray |Aaron Sarin |Brian Stewart |David Cohen

Last week, Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”) and three-time recipient of awards for excellence in teaching, was stripped her of her chaired professorship, suspended for a year at half pay, and denied summer pay in perpetuity. Why? As far as I can tell, for telling her students the truth in the classroom and exercising her constitutional right to express her private opinions outside the classroom. Penn’s administration doesn’t see it that way.
Opinion | The Roots of STEM Excellence

Aug 30, 2024 | wsj.com | Charles Murray

WSJ Opinion: The Kamala Harris Soap Bubble CampaignYour browser does not support HTML5 video. 0:00Paused0:00 / 4:51WSJ Opinion: The Kamala Harris Soap Bubble CampaignPlay video: WSJ Opinion: The Kamala Harris Soap Bubble CampaignEvery advanced nation has a small group of people who have the potential to accelerate scientific progress and foster the advances in living that go with it. People are eligible for that group not because of their personalities or virtues.
Charles Murray: A Life

Jul 18, 2024 | aei.org | Charles Murray |Karlyn Bowman |Nicholas Eberstadt

Charles Murray arrived at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on July 2, 1990. Over the next three and a half decades, he has made groundbreaking contributions to social science. It is rarely possible to draw a straight line between a scholar’s work and a change in public policy, but it is certainly fair to say that Murray’s work on welfare policy directly contributed to the passage of the 1996 welfare reform act.
Data Tools 8: ZIP Codes from 1970-2020

Mar 22, 2024 | aei.org | Charles Murray

The eighth in a series from Charles Murray When Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 was published in 2012, I used information from the 2000 decennial census to create a database of all the ZIP codes in the country. It included a socioeconomic index score based on the percentage of adults who had college degrees and the median family income in each ZIP code. It played a big part in my analysis of the degree to which elite Americans were clustered in a small set of elite ZIP codes.
Our ‘Troubled’ Underclass

Mar 2, 2024 | yahoo.com | Charles Murray

Imagine someone whose childhood ranks at the very bottom in every dimension—neglect, foster homes, adoption into a family that breaks up—but who, unbeknown to any of the people around him, has an intellect at the very top. As an adult, he brings his intellect to an account of what such a childhood looks and feels like from the inside. That’s what you get with Rob Henderson’s newly published book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.
In The Decade Before Crime Rose, “Broken Windows” Policing Stopped

Aug 1, 2023 | aei.org | Charles Murray

George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, was followed in many places across the country by protest marches and riots. The Black Lives Matter movement mushroomed in size, funding and influence. Mayors of some major cities pilloried police and urged slashing their budgets. In the ensuing months, especially as pandemic lockdowns eased, urban crime became more intrusive. Rampant shoplifting forced the closure of many stores, large and small.
Opinion | In the decade before crime rose, ‘broken windows’ policing stopped

Aug 1, 2023 | washingtonpost.com | Charles Murray

CommentCharles Murray is the F.A. Hayek chair emeritus in cultural studies at the American Enterprise Institute. This article was adapted from his AEI working paper “The Collapse of Broken-Windows Policing in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, 2013-22.”George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, was followed in many places across the country by protest marches and riots. The Black Lives Matter movement mushroomed in size, funding and influence.
The Collapse of Broken-Windows Policing in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, 2013-22

Jul 21, 2023 | aei.org | Charles Murray

George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, was followed by protest marches and riots. The Black Lives Matter movement mushroomed in size, funding, and influence. Mayors and city council members in major cities—New York, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles among them—urged that police funding be slashed. In the following months, crime became more intrusive.
Data Tools 7: Complete Multiyear Arrest Records for Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, DC

Jun 28, 2023 | aei.org | Charles Murray

The seventh in a series from Charles Murray Samuel Johnson famously said that a man who is tired of London is tired of life. I feel analogously about the dataset for Data Tools #7. If you are a quantitative social policy analyst and cannot think of good questions to ask about this dataset, you need a new career. The database, LawanyArrests.csv, contains the complete arrest records for arguably the three most important cities in America: Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC.
Data Tools 6: The Geography of Traditional Families in America

Apr 17, 2023 | aei.org | Charles Murray

The sixth in a series from Charles Murray. “Every generation, civilization is invaded by barbarians—we call them ‘children.’” Thesewords, often attributed to Hannah Arendt, express a truth that societies have known since societiesbegan: Children must be socialized. Two other truths that societies have instinctively known formillennia are that the birth parents must be the primary actors and that marriage is the bestframework.