He was the darling of the Republican Party in the 1980s, a favorite of the Reagan administration. He was an outspoken and highly visible supporter of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He has written a book that blasts affirmative action and criticizes the actions of inner-city blacks. He was one of the most sought-after conservative radio and television commentators in the country.
Now, Glenn Loury is a professor at Brown University, regarded as one of the nation's most liberal and politically correct universities.
A lot has changed in the past 20 years for the economics professor and black social commentator, who just started his first semester at the University. The 57-year-old, who 10 years ago was labeled by the media as one of the most prominent black conservatives in the nation, has not only shed that label, but also has drastically shifted his politics to the left.
"I was once considered one of the pre-eminent black conservatives in the past, but now I'm more of a black progressive and I'm in the right place," Loury said.
The Department of Economics hired Loury this summer as part of President Ruth Simmons' Plan for Academic Enrichment, which called for 100 new faculty positions and an increase in multidisciplinary studies. Loury, who taught at Boston University last year, is considered to be one of the brightest economists in the world, as well as one of the most prominent pundits on race in the United States today.
Loury's route to Brown has been unlike that of any other. Few professors have attracted as much attention for both their academic work and their personal lives.
Conservatism and controversy
Loury was born and raised in the South Side of Chicago, growing up in what he described as a comfortable, working-class family. As a youth, he excelled in academics, graduating from high school at the top of his class at the age of 16. He attended the Illinois Institute of Technology on scholarship and, after dropping out of school for a few years to work and to start a family, he finished his undergraduate education at Northwestern University, also on scholarship.
During his junior year at Northwestern, Loury discovered his interest in economics. He graduated from the school with a degree in mathematics in 1972 and moved on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in economics in 1976. Over the next few years, as a professor at Northwestern and the University of Michigan, Loury published several economics papers and quickly became regarded as one of the brightest minds in the field. This was confirmed in 1982 when, at the age of 33, Loury became the first black professor to be tenured in economics at Harvard University.
"I was a hot commodity," Loury said in an unassuming manner. "Being African-American didn't hurt me - I was one of the leading young theoretical economists of the generation."
It was only after Loury arrived at Harvard that he began writing and speaking about black society in the United States. Until that point, Loury was known mainly for his technical articles in economics journals. But in 1984, Loury became noticed around the nation when he printed an essay in the New Republic titled "A New American Dilemma," in which he addressed "fundamental failures in black society," such as "social disorganization among poor blacks, 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."
After the article was published, Loury became a sensation among Republicans and conservatives. His name became known around Capitol Hill, and he became a sought-after radio and television commentator.
"That just happened overnight because of the exposure and people being interested in those ideas," Loury said of his new popularity. "It just came my way - it really wasn't something that I sought, but when the opportunity presented itself, I did take it."
Loury's prominence grew over the next few years as he published articles that criticized the black community, affirmative action and black liberal leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
By 1986, Loury was a star, both academically and politically. That year, he addressed the National Press Club and was invited to the White House, where he sat at President Reagan's table during a state dinner.
Then came 1987, which brought both the high and low points in Loury's career. That spring, Loury was selected to be the next undersecretary of education, the second-highest position in the U.S. Department of Education. Loury would have been the second-highest-ranking black person in the Reagan administration.
But the selection was closely followed by two highly publicized and embarrassing incidents that nearly ruined Loury's career. In June of that year, Pamela Foster, a 23-year-old Smith College graduate with whom Loury was having an affair, charged that Loury, then 38, had assaulted her and threatened to kill her after the two had had a fight. The charges were later dropped, but the damage had been done: Loury had to withdraw his name for the undersecretary appointment.
"It was a terrible thing," Loury said. "The bottom line is that I was involved with a young woman and it went sour, and some allegations which were not true about me assaulting her were made."
However, that was only the start of problems for Loury. In December of the same year, he was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana. At the time, Loury had a cocaine addiction. The story was published in newspapers nationwide, and many op-ed pieces picked up on the irony that Loury's actions mirrored those of the inner-city blacks he criticized. As a 1995 New Yorker article put it, Loury "was emerging as exactly the kind of person he had warned black America to avoid."
A change in philosophy
Despite the potentially career-ending run-ins with the law and his drug addiction, Loury was able to bounce back. In exchange for undergoing drug rehabilitation, the drug possession charges were dropped, and Loury began going to church and has described himself as a born-again Christian.
"I got my life back together and I haven't looked back," Loury said.
For the next few years, Loury stayed out of the public spotlight. It was during that time in the early 1990s that Loury's political identity started to shift. When books by conservative authors, including "The End of Racism" by Dinesh D'Souza and "The Bell Curve" by Charles Murray were published, Loury realized that conservatives were doing nothing to try to advance black society in the United States.
Conservatives "were more interested in proving that liberals were wrong about stuff and they weren't actually helping black people," he said.
While Loury maintained that he is right about many of the things he has written in the past, he said he now realizes that he needed to be smarter about how he articulated his thoughts.
"What I was wrong about was not realizing that in my saying those things in the way I said them had political consequences," Loury said. "It wasn't just a matter about being right. Being right about something isn't good enough. You also have to be smart about it."
Loury said that, as a result, many of the things he had said or written were damaging the cause he was trying to further - the advancement of black society.
"What I didn't realize was that my role as a kind of rank-breaking truth-teller, a black who wouldn't adhere to party lines, who speaks his own mind, was doing great damage politically to the causes I believed in," he said.
"So when I was close to the people in the Reagan administration during the 1980s ... when I was aligning myself with Republican and conservative interests, I thought I was just telling the truth, that I saw it and that it was needed to be said, when in fact, I was helping to legitimate a political movement that had no interest whatsoever in promoting the well-being of the people I cared about. I ought to have been smarter about it."
Still, in Loury's 1995 book, "One by One from the Inside Out: Race and Responsibility in America," a collection of 26 of his essays, he continued to criticize inner-city blacks for their actions, blasted affirmative action for being detrimental to black advancement and advocated black self-reliance.
A Publisher's Weekly review of the book called Loury a "prominent black neoconservative," a tag Loury said was "probably accurate" at the time. But as Loury re-emerged into the spotlight after the book was released, newspapers and critics took notice that Loury was becoming less conservative.
"He's still leaning to the right," wrote Wil Haygood in a 1995 Boston Globe article. "But the lean has softened. A little."
Loury's shift to the left became more evident in his interviews and articles between 1995 and 2002. Loury not only stopped criticizing blacks for their actions, but also started to see affirmative action in a different light. In 1997, he criticized the ban of racial affirmative action in California for admission to state universities and for state jobs. He argued if racial diversity was desired in colleges and some fields of work, then race should be considered a factor.
Newspapers continued to label Loury as a conservative. It would not be until the publication of his most recent book, "The Anatomy of Racial Inequality," in 2002 that he would finally be considered a progressive.
In the book, Loury no longer criticizes affirmative action or the behavior of blacks. Instead, he argues that it is a "racial stigma" that prevents blacks from advancing in society. He blames the misconceptions white Americans have of black Americans as the root of the problem.
Coming to Brown
The process that brought Loury to Brown started last year as he read the newspaper.
"One day, I was reading the New York Times and there was a front page story about Simmons and the Plan for Academic Enrichment," Loury said. "So that just got me to thinking, so I picked up the phone and asked if anybody was interested down there."
At the time, Loury seemed to be well settled in at Boston University, where he joined the faculty after leaving Harvard in 1991. At BU, Loury was a university professor, professor of economics and director of the Institute on Race and Social Division.
But Loury felt that he wasn't receiving the type of support he wanted at BU, he said. He refused to say more on the matter, but an Oct. 9 article in the Boston Globe said Loury left because he felt alienated from former BU president John Silber, who was unsupportive of the Institute on Race and Social Division.
Loury said he contacted several key administrators at Brown. After speaking to President Ruth Simmons, Provost Robert Zimmer and several members of the economics department, he decided to apply for a position at the University.
"This is a very exciting place," Loury said. "The potential to do something here seemed to be really quite great and I was persuaded after talking with the leadership at the University ... that the kind of thing that I wanted to do on race and inequality would be perfect here. It just seemed too good of an opportunity to pass up."
Loury was offered a position at Brown this summer. He was named a professor of economics, a research associate of the Population Studies and Training Center and was given a courtesy appointment in Africana studies.
Professor Andrew Foster, chair of the economics department, was excited to welcome Loury to Brown. Foster said Loury's qualifications could be summed up with one example:
"Four of the letters we got supporting (Loury) were from Nobel Prize winners in economics," Foster said.
Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P'07 said Loury's expertise in a variety of fields makes him an excellent fit with the Plan for Academic Enrichment, which calls for an increase in multidisciplinary studies.
"While he is firmly grounded in economics, which builds bridges to other things," Vohra said, "he has a lot of interesting things to say to people in Africana studies, public policy and population studies."
A colleague at BU also spoke highly of Loury.
"He was a real genius," said Michael Manove, associate chair of the economics department at BU. "He was certainly the smartest guy in our department and one of the best mathematic theorists, as well as being very good in other fields. I think he will be an extraordinary asset to Brown."
An Insider Higher Ed article last month speculated that Loury was hired, in part, as a response to Simmons' February call for intellectual diversity at Brown. But Foster said the economics department did not take Simmons' speech into consideration when hiring Loury.
"That was really a non-issue," Foster said. "(The economics department) really evaluated him in terms of economics and his ability to frame something and to influence the economics department. I think the University, more broadly, was thinking about that."
For now, Loury is still getting acclimated to Brown. Last week, he was writing an economics paper about the lottery - "it kind of sends the wrong message to people about how to get ahead in life" - and is also working on a book about affirmative action. Loury hopes to finish "What Price, Diversity? The Economics and the Ethics of Racial Affirmative Action" by next summer. The book will be a collection of many of Loury's recent essays and articles.
Loury is set to teach two classes next semester. One of the courses is at the graduate level and will study economic inequality.
"The graduate course will be going through the theories of inequality, inequalities of all kinds - why some countries are slower to grow than others, why some regions within countries are left behind, why some groups, whether racial, ethnic or whatever (are left behind)," Loury said.
Loury will also teach one undergraduate course, EC137: "Race."
"(The course) is about race and American society," Loury said. "What I want to do is bring all these issues that this Hurricane Katrina debate has brought forward - I want to bring them out. I want to talk about affirmative action, crime and punishment, schools and the test score cap, urban politics and the history of the civil rights movement, and try to bring all these different elements together in a contemporary course."
Loury is currently trying to get used to the campus and to the Providence area. He commutes between Providence and the Boston area, where he lives with his wife and two sons. But despite the difficulties of the transition, Loury said he is happy at Brown so far.
"The facilities are magnificent, the campus is beautiful - I even like living four days a week in Providence, which I never thought I was going to do," Loury said.
Loury said he wishes he could have started teaching this semester in order to acclimate quicker to Brown's campus, but he is looking forward to the spring semester.I'm very excited about teaching," Loury said.
