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 Northeastern University. [3] In 1972, he received his bachelor of arts in mathematics from Northwestern University. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 awarded for his doctoral dissertation, titled "Essays in the Theory of the Distribution of Income", under the supervision of Robert M. Solow.[4] During the completion of his Ph.D. at MIT, he met his future wife, Linda.[5]

After being awarded his Ph.D., Loury became an assistant professor of economics at Northwestern University. In 1979 he moved to teach at the University of Michigan where we continued to be an assistant professor until being promoted to a Professor of Economics from 1980-1982. In 1982, at the age of 33, Loury became the first black tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University.[6] He moved to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government after two years,[6] feeling that the economics appointment was a mistake because he "wasn’t yet fully established as a scientist."[7]

In 1984, Loury drew the attention of critics with "A New American Dilemma", published in The New Republic, where he addressed what he terms "fundamental failures in black society" such as "the lagging academic performance of black students, the disturbingly high rate of black-on-black crime, and the alarming increase in early unwed pregnancies among blacks."

In 1987, Loury's career continued its ascent when he was selected to be the next Undersecretary of Education, a position which would have made him the second-highest-ranking black person in the Reagan administration. However, Loury withdrew from consideration on June 1, three days before being charged with assault after a "lover's quarrel" with a 23-year-old woman; she later dropped the charges.[8] Loury was later arrested for possession of cocaine.[9]

After a subsequent period of seclusion and self-reflection, Loury reemerged as a born-again Christian and described himself as a "black progressive."[10] 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.[3] In addition to economics, he has also written extensively on the themes of racial inequality and social policy.[2]

In June 2020, Loury published a rebuttal to a letter Brown University president Christina Paxson sent to students and alumni in response to the killing of George Floyd by a policeman. Loury questioned the purpose of Paxson's letter, saying it either "affirmed platitudes to which we can all subscribe, or, more menacingly, it asserted controversial and arguable positions as though they were axiomatic certainties."[11]

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.[12][13][14] He was elected president of the Eastern Economics Association in 2013. Loury is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Loury currently hosts The Glenn Show on Bloggingheads.tv. Past guests have included John McWhorter, Peter Arcidiacono, Amy Wax, Richard Epstein, John Wood Jr., Carol M. Swain, and Coleman Hughes, generally covering subjects related to race, economics, and current events.[15]

Loury's wife Linda Datcher Loury died in 2011.[5] He has since remarried.[16]

• 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
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Video interviews/discussions with Loury at bloggingheads.tv