Glenn Loury

PoliticsEconomics & PolicyCulture

Brown University economics professor and one of America's foremost scholars on race, inequality, and social policy. Loury was the first tenured Black economics professor at Harvard and has spent decades pushing back against what he sees as evasive thinking about racial disparities in America. He hosts The Glenn Show podcast and Substack, which feature long-form conversations with scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals — often his longtime interlocutor John McWhorter. Loury's views have evolved significantly over his career, making him a genuinely independent thinker who resists capture by either political camp.

Known for

Was the first Black economist to receive tenure at Harvard University
Hosts The Glenn Show, a long-form conversation podcast frequently featuring John McWhorter
His academic work on social inequality, discrimination, and affirmative policy has been cited across the political spectrum
Known for publicly evolving his views on race and policy over decades, making him a genuinely independent intellectual voice