Former parent visitor Walter Olson elected to McDaniel College Board of Trustees

McDaniel College has named Walter Olson to the college's Board of Trustees.

Olson, who is currently a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, is known for his widely published writing on law, public policy, and regulation. He is the author of four books on topics ranging from mass litigation to workplace law to the state of law schools. His first book, “The Litigation Explosion,” led The Washington Post to dub him an “intellectual guru of tort reform.” He has also written extensively for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Baltimore Sun and is the founder and principal writer of the longest-running blog on law, “Overlawyered.” Olson has spoken to hundreds of civic and student audiences and his more than 400 broadcast appearances include leading media outlets, such as the BBC and “Oprah.”

Throughout his career, he has advised many public officials from the White House to town councils and is active in civic affairs in Maryland and, specifically, in Frederick County. He was appointed by former Gov. Larry Hogan to serve as a co-chair of the Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission. In Frederick County, he has served on the county’s charter review commission and currently serves on the county ethics commission and on the board of the Frederick County Landmarks Foundation.

He was previously associated with the Manhattan Institute and American Enterprise Institute, where he worked as an editor at the magazine, Regulation, edited by the now late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Olson holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Yale and studied economics at the graduate level at UCLA.

A former parent visitor to the McDaniel College Board of Trustees, his son, Tim, graduated from McDaniel in May 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies, and Tim’s wife, Gillian, graduated from McDaniel in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education.