Williams was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, a syndicated columnist, and author.

Williams held classical liberal and libertarian views,[1] and wrote frequently for Townhall, WND, and Jewish World Review.

Williams knew many of the individuals that Cosby speaks of from his childhood, including Weird Harold and Fat Albert.

After graduating from high school, Williams traveled to California, where he lived with his father and attended Los Angeles City College for one semester.

He challenged the racial order with provocative statements to his fellow soldiers, resulting in an overseeing officer filing a court-martial proceeding against Williams.

From Korea, Williams wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism in the American government and military and questioning the actions black Americans should take given the state of affairs, writing: Should Negroes be relieved of their service obligation or continue defending and dying for empty promises of freedom and equality?

"[9] Following his military service, Williams served as a juvenile group supervisor for the Los Angeles County Probation Department from 1963 to 1967.

During his time at UCLA, Williams came into contact with economists such as Armen Alchian, James M. Buchanan, and Axel Leijonhufvud who challenged his assumptions.

In the summer of 1972, Sowell was hired as director of the Urban Institute's Ethnic Minorities Project, which Williams joined shortly thereafter.

[23] As an economist, Williams was a proponent of free market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention.

[14] Subsequently, Williams spoke on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market, eliminating their opportunities for employment.

[26][27][28][29] Williams believed that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today.

[30] Williams viewed gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals, and argued that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime.

"[36] In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a "certificate of amnesty and pardon" to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks – and "thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry."

[39] In his autobiography, Williams cited Frédéric Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman as influences that led him to become a libertarian.

In 2009, Greg Ransom, a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, ranked Williams as the third-most important "Hayekian" Public Intellectual in America, behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel.

On December 1, 2020, Williams died in his car in Fairfax, Virginia, shortly after teaching a class at George Mason University, at age 84.