Canisius University welcomes Jason L. Riley, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, to campus on Tuesday, April 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Montante Cultural Center. The lecture is presented under the auspices of a conservative lecture series at the university and sponsored by the student chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom. The talk, titled “The Problem With Social Justice,” is free and open to the public, and includes a question-and-answer session.
Riley has written about politics, economics, education, immigration and social inequality for more than 25 years at The Wall Street Journal. He is also a frequent public speaker and provides commentary for television and radio news outlets.
After joining the Journal in 1994, he was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the Editorial Board in 2005. He joined the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank focused on urban issues, in 2015. He has also worked for USA Today and The Buffalo News.
Riley is the author of five books. In 2008 he published Let Them In, which argues for more legal immigration. His second book, Please Stop Helping Us, is about government efforts to help the black underclass and was published in 2014. In 2017 he published False Black Power?, an assessment of why black political success has not translated into more economic advancement. In 2021 he published Maverick, a biography of the iconic economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell, and narrated the documentary film, Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World. Riley’s most recent book, published in 2022, The Black Boom, is an analysis of black economic progress prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Born in Buffalo, Riley earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
For additional information, please contact University Communications at 716-888-2790.
Canisius was founded in 1870 in Buffalo, NY, and is one of 27 Jesuit colleges and universities in the U.S. Consistently ranked among the top institutions in the Northeast, Canisius offers undergraduate, graduate and pre-professional programs distinguished by close student-faculty collaboration, mentoring and an emphasis on ethical, purpose-driven leadership.
