William (Bill) Gasarch is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. Bill received a BS in Mathematics at SUNY Stonybrook and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard.
Bill summarizes his political history as follows:
“I was born in liberal New York, to liberal parents, who instilled liberal ideas into me. My grandmother was a labor leader, which in those days meant she was a communist, or at least was called one. I went to SUNY Stonybrook at a time when the student body would like to think it was the Berkeley of the East politically. It wasn’t. I went to grad school at that bastion of liberal thought, Harvard. After grad school, I got interested in libertarian ideas and began reading up on it. While interesting and a good approach to some of our problems, I was turned off by the fact that they didn’t seem to take intelligent objections seriously. Even so, my foray into libertarian thought makes me at least ask the question “Do we need the Government for X?” rather than assume YES (as a liberal might) or assume NO (as a libertarian might). I have voted for the third party in many elections and do not consider myself a member of any party.”