Glenn Loury

Loury has said he was born in 1948.⁠[1]

He grew up on Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s and 1960s; his father was a senior administrator at the Internal Revenue Service and his mother a secretary at the Veterans Administration.⁠[2]

After finishing high school at 16 he entered the Illinois Institute of Technology, left after starting a family to work at a printing plant while taking night classes at a junior college, and later won a scholarship to Northwestern University.⁠[2]

He recalled that the shop foreman let him use the office typewriter for his papers and that his fellow workers were rooting for the Black kid from the South Side.⁠[3]

He received a B.A. in mathematics from Northwestern University in 1972 and a Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1976 with the thesis “Essays in the Theory of the Distribution of Income”; he was an assistant professor of economics at Northwestern from 1976 to 1979 and taught at the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a university founded in Detroit in 1817 that moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1837; it is governed by a statewide-elected Board of Regents and also has campuses in Dearborn and Flint.Open the full entry from 1979 to 1982.⁠[4]

The American Economic Association notes that his first published paper, “A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences” (1977), coined the term “social capital,” years before James Coleman’s work.⁠[5]

In 1982, at 33, he became the first Black tenured professor of economics in Harvard’s history.⁠[6]

He recalled being jointly appointed in economics and Afro-American Studies, then losing confidence at Harvard about whether he could deliver at the top of economic theory and moving to the Kennedy School of Government, where he began writing social criticism for popular magazines.⁠[1]

In 1984 he published “A New American Dilemma” in The New Republic, arguing that problems at the bottom of Black society could no longer be blamed solely on white racism, and became a sought-after commentator among conservatives; in 1986 he addressed the National Press Club and attended a White House state dinner.⁠[7]

In this period he alienated Black leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Jesse Jackson.⁠[2]

In March 1987 the Ronald Reagan administration chose him to be Under Secretary of Education; civil rights groups including the NAACP vowed to testify against him, and he charged that they were attacking him because he is Black.⁠[8]

On June 1, 1987, he withdrew from consideration for “personal reasons.” Days later a woman with whom he had a personal relationship filed assault charges against him, and he pleaded not guilty in court.⁠[9]

The charges were later dropped; he later said the relationship had gone sour and that the allegations that he assaulted her “were not true.”⁠[7]

The post was ultimately filled by Linus Wright, the former Dallas schools superintendent.⁠[10]

He was professor of political economy at the Kennedy School from 1984 to 1991, became professor of economics at Boston University in 1991, and from 1994 also held the title of University Professor.⁠[4]

In 1995 the Free Press published his collection One by One From The Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America.⁠[11]

The book won the 1996 American Book Award and the 1996 Christianity Today Book Award.⁠[12]

In late summer 1997 the Institute on Race and Social Division, an interdisciplinary Boston University center he directed, began operating, focusing on racial division in America while also studying social conflicts in other nations.⁠[13]

He resigned from the American Enterprise InstituteAmerican Enterprise InstituteThe American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a public-policy think tank based in Washington, DC, founded in 1938. Its research covers economics, foreign and defense policy, social, cultural, and constitutional issues, and domestic policy.Open the full entry’s Council of Academic Advisers over Dinesh D’Souza’s book The End of Racism, and in 1997 criticized conservative attitudes toward poor families and inner-city lawbreakers in The New York Times.⁠[14]

In spring 2000 he gave the W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures at Harvard; in February 2002 Harvard University Press published his book The Anatomy of Racial Inequality.⁠[12]

He has taught at Brown University since 2005, having previously served on the faculties of Boston University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.⁠[15]

He delivered the 2006–2007 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry, on racial stigma, mass incarceration and human values.⁠[16]

In 2007 he and the linguist John McWhorter recorded their first conversation for Bloggingheads; he recalled being more affiliated with the left at the time and about to publish Race, Incarceration, and American Values, a critique of mass incarceration.⁠[17]

In 2016 the American Economic Association named him one of its four Distinguished Fellows for that year.⁠[18]

The citation credits him with groundbreaking contributions to welfare economics, income distribution, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics and labor economics, calls his work on affirmative action particularly influential, and notes that he was the association’s vice-president in 1997.⁠[5]

On May 25, 2016, he gave the Lee Lecture in Political Science and Government at Magdalen College, Oxford, titled “When Black Lives Matter: The Ethics of Race, Crime and Punishment in America.”⁠[16]

On May 7, 2019, the Manhattan Institute released his report “Why Does Racial Inequality Persist?: Culture, Causation, and Responsibility,” which argues for remedying anti-Black bias while also addressing behavior patterns that keep Black people from seizing opportunities.⁠[19]

On June 1, 2020, Brown President Christina Paxson and senior administrators co-signed a letter indicting structures of racism; he wrote a challenge to it, which City Journal published. He called the collectively signed statement “thought-policing” and questioned explaining every racial disparity by “structural racism.”⁠[20]

On December 9, 2020, the Manhattan Institute announced that he had joined it as a senior fellow working on persistent racial inequality.⁠[21]

In March 2022 Brown announced that he had won the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation’s 2022 Bradley Prize of $250,000; foundation president Rick Graber praised him for promoting viewpoint diversity in academia.⁠[6]

The foundation says he is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the Council on Foreign RelationsCouncil on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a nonpartisan, independent U.S. membership organization and think tank founded in 1921 and based in New York, which has published Foreign Affairs since 1922 and takes no institutional positions on policy; Michael Froman has been its 15th president since 2023.Open the full entry and a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.⁠[22]

He appeared on episode 285 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a professor of economics and social sciences at Brown University, a podcaster and a social critic; topics included Martin Luther King Jr., the history of slavery, equality of outcome, Black patriotism, the Joe RoganJoe RoganJoe Rogan is an American podcaster, stand-up comedian and UFC commentator whose long-form interview podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, launched in 2009, is among the most listened-to podcasts in the world; he hosted the NBC reality show Fear Factor, and his show’s content and political statements have repeatedly drawn controversy.Open the full entry controversy, universities, Thomas Sowell and Barack Obama.⁠[23]

From August 1, 2022, he became a John A. Paulson Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and brought his podcast The Glenn Show there for joint production and marketing.⁠[24]

In August 2023 he wrote that he and McWhorter had in some ways flipped positions, conceding that McWhorter had been right about the close-mindedness of academic discourse on race.⁠[17]

His memoir Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative was published on May 14, 2024.⁠[1]

The publisher, W. W. Norton, describes it as recounting his path from Chicago’s South Side to Harvard and his changing positions on identity, race and belief.⁠[25]

He said he wrote the book first to tell himself the truth, including about his repeated infidelity to his late wife, also an economist and the mother of their two sons.⁠[26]

Air Mail’s review called him one of the few independent voices still heard in a polarized America.⁠[27]

He said in an interview that he once moved sharply left and took up incarceration as his cause, and in recent years moved back right, partly because he had soured on “defund the police”; he is also critical of Donald Trump.⁠[14]

In September 2024 he called himself a “neoliberal economist,” said he opposes defunding the police and reparations, argued that African Americans already have equal rights, and identified with self-help and personal responsibility: “that makes me a Black conservative.”⁠[3]

In 2025 Polity Press published his book Self-Censorship.⁠[28]

The publisher says the book expands his 1990s essay on “political correctness,” analyzing the social forces that keep people from voicing unpopular views in public.⁠[29]

As of October 2026 the Hoover Institution describes him as a distinguished visiting fellow there and the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Brown University.⁠[28]

He publishes weekly episodes of The Glenn Show and essays through his Substack newsletter, with a conversation with McWhorter every two weeks; he writes that although he often calls himself a conservative, his views do not map neatly onto any one ideology.⁠[30]

The Manhattan Institute’s expert page says he was a Paulson Fellow there.⁠[31]

Personal website: Public link: https://glennloury.substack.com (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

X: Public account: https://x.com/GlennLoury (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/GlennLouryShow (opens in a new window)⁠[23]

Northwestern University: Official website: https://www.northwestern.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

University of Michigan: Official website: https://umich.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

Harvard University: Official website: https://www.harvard.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[32]

Boston University: Official website: https://www.bu.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[13]

Brown University: Official website: https://www.brown.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

Manhattan Institute: Official website: https://manhattan.institute/ (opens in a new window)⁠[31]

Hoover Institution: Official website: https://www.hoover.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[32]