Glenn Loury

Loury was born in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, growing up in a redlined neighborhood. Before going to college he fathered two children, and supported them with a job in a printing plant. When he wasn't working he took classes at Southeast Junior College, where he won a scholarship to study at Northwestern University.[9][10] In 1972, he received his B.A. degree in mathematics from Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1976, writing his dissertation, "Essays in the Theory of the Distribution of Income", under the supervision of Robert M. Solow.[11] At MIT he met his future wife, Linda Datcher Loury.[12]

Loury became an assistant professor of economics at Northwestern University after receiving his doctorate. In 1979, he moved to teach at the University of Michigan, and was promoted to full professor of economics in 1980. In 1982, at age 33, Loury became the first black tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University.[3] He moved to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government after two years.[13] While at Kennedy school he would befriend William Bennett and Bill Kristol[3] (He later said in an interview that his economics appointment was a mistake because he "wasn’t yet fully established as a scientist".[14])

In 1987, Loury was under consideration to be an Undersecretary of Education in the Reagan administration. He withdrew from consideration on June 1, three days before citing personal reasons.[15]

After a subsequent period of seclusion and self-reflection, Loury reemerged as a born-again Christian and described himself as a "black progressive."[16] Loury left Harvard in 1991 to go to Boston University, where he headed the Institute on Race and Social Division. In 2005, Loury left Boston University for Brown University, where he was named a professor in the Economics Department, and a research associate of the Population Studies and Training Center.

Loury's areas of study include applied microeconomic theory: welfare economics, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of income distribution. In addition to economics, he has also written extensively on the themes of racial inequality and social policy.[17] Loury testified on racial issues before the Senate Banking Committee on March 4, 2021.[18] and presented at the Bruce D. Benson Center Lecture Series at the University of Colorado Boulder on February 8, 2021.

Loury hosts The Glenn Show on his Substack with John McWhorter, often regarding questions of race and education.[19]

On a 2017 episode of the Sam Harris podcast Waking Up, Loury stated that while he used to be "a Reagan conservative", he now thought of himself as a "centrist Democrat, or maybe a mildly right-of-center Democrat."[20] The New York Times described Loury as "conservative-leaning" and The Wall Street Journal described Loury as a “Reagan Republican”.[21][22]

He has spoken out in opposition to cancel culture.[23] On January 9, 2007, Loury spoke out against increasing the number of troops in Iraq.[24]

Loury was elected as a member of the Econometric Society in 1994, Vice President of the American Economics Society in 1997, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000, and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2011.[39][40][41] He was elected president of the Eastern Economics Association in 2013. Loury is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a main academic contributor to the 1776 Unites project. He received the Bradley Prize in 2022, and was named the John Kenneth Galbraith Fellow from the American Academy of Political & Social Science for that same year.[42][43]

Loury fathered two children as a teenager.[44]

Loury and his wife, Linda Datcher Loury, had two sons together.[44] Linda died in 2011.[12] He has since remarried.[45]

• Loury, Glenn (1995). One by One From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America (First ed.). New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-919441-6.
• "Social Exclusion and Ethnic Groups: The Challenge to Economics" (PDF). Boston University. 1999.
• Loury, Glenn (2002). The Anatomy of Racial Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00625-6.
• Loury, Glenn; Modood, Tariq; Teles, Steven (2005). Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and the UK. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82309-8.
• Loury, Glenn; Karlan, Pamela; Wacquant, Loic; Shelby, Tommie (2008). Race, Incarceration, and American Values. A Boston review book. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-12311-2.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Glenn Loury.

• Glenn Loury's webpage at Brown University
• Loury's Fellow page at the American Academy of Political & Social Science
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Loury's blog on Substack
• Video interviews/discussions with Loury at bloggingheads.tv