Annual Gala Dinner and John Bonython Lecture 2023 - The Centre for Independent Studies

Annual Gala Dinner and John Bonython Lecture 2023

The Soul of Black Conservatism

Jason Riley is a columnist at the Wall Street Journal, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and is widely regarded as one of America’s leading figures in the Black conservatism movement. He is author of several books, including Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed and Maverick (2021), the biography of economist, historian, columnist and best-selling author Thomas Sowell, one of the most influential and brilliant minds of the past half century who delivered the 1988 John Bonython Lecture.

As Sowell, who has spent a lifetime challenging orthodoxies on race, economics, education and culture has argued: “The sins of others are always fascinating to human beings, but they are not always the best way to self-development or self-advancement.” His impressive body of scholarship, rooted in the classical liberal tradition of pragmatic individualism, remains so relevant to western public discourse on everything from minimum wage laws and policing to social justice and identity politics.