Will Wilkinson

Will Wilkinson (born 1973) is an American writer.

Early life and education
Wilinnson was born in Independence, Missouri. He grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa. He attended the University of Northern Iowa, where he graduated in 1995. In 1988, he received an M.A. in philosophy from Northern Illinois University. He then worked toward a Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In 2009, Wilkinson gained Canadian citizenship via his father, a Canadian immigrant in the United States, whose Canadian citizenship was reinstated following a change in Canadian emigration law.

Career
Wilkinson was U.S. politics correspondent for The Economist. From 2004 to 2010, he was a research fellow at the Cato Institute, where he was managing editor of Cato Unbound, a monthly web magazine.

In 2015, joined the Niskanen Center as vice president of policy. In January 2021, he was fired after tweeting, "If Biden really wanted unity, he’d lynch Mike Pence," which he later apologized for.

He subsequently was invited to appear on podcasts hosted by The New York Times, The Argument and the Ezra Klein Show Podcast, hosted by Ezra Klein, to discuss his experience.

Following his firing by the Niskanen Center, Wilkinson launched a Substack newsletter, "Model Citizen".

His political philosophy was described by The American Conservative as "Rawlsekian"; that is, a mixture of John Rawls's principles and Friedrich von Hayek's methods. Wilkinson formerly described his political views as libertarian, but he now rejects that label.