Glenn Loury
Appearances
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I said, what has been proceeding there in Gaza is a collective punishment that I don't think is justified. And I got notified the next day the Manhattan Institute was discontinuing its relationship with me as a senior fellow.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
They were notes to the grindstone. They were soft left.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah. I'd say maybe 12 out of... 150, something like that. They had a program, MIT did, determined to respond to the time. They were liberal Democrats. They had a kind of affirmative action thing. Now, I will say...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I'm quite sure I would have been admitted to MIT based on the record that I had established at Northwestern, the prize-winning record, A's in everything, taking graduate courses in math and economics when I was still an undergraduate and so on. I think I would have been admitted regardless of their program. But I was among three, a cohort of three African-Americans in a class of 25.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, I graduated high school 60 years ago. Whoa. Where? John Marshall Harlan High School, public school in Chicago. How is it now? I don't know, to be honest with you. I know that the community that houses it has gone into decline and it's become a part of the South Side problematic, which is Chicago with the violence and so on.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
who were admitted in 1972, and they had been admitting since 1970, and they continued this on through, I think, 75 or 76, three Black students. I was told later that the way that that was done was they had their regular budget for graduate students, and then they had additional funds that would allow them to admit three more students who were African American.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So they were about 12 of us, 12 to 15 students.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I did. One didn't finish. He was from Kansas City by coincidence, and he left after a couple of years and never finished his degree. The other teaches at Harvard now and is a dear friend whom I've known for 50 years.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
It was a modest working upper, working lower middle class community. When I was at that school, it was integrated. There were 30 or 40 percent of the student body was white. I'm sure it's all black now and has been for some time. But I've lost touch with what's going on back there. But I'm just saying I've been around for a long time. Yeah, it's a long time.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
It was absolutely top-notch. I mean, it was—it's just technical stuff. And, you know, you were challenged, and the people that you were studying with and competing against— They had come from Israel and India and Japan and the UK and Russia, and they were the best in the world cohort of young prospective economists. And it was very rigorous, very mathematical. It was MIT, after all.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
It was Paul Samuelson, after all. They were green eye shade types with the math and the equations and the statistics and the analysis. But they also had something of an interest, a political flair, as I say, moderate Democrat, left of center, but not really socialist. appreciating the market, but thinking about the mixed economy and regulation and stuff.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Samuelson wrote a column for Newsweek every month and Milton Friedman wrote a column for Newsweek and they kind of, Friedman, the conservative from Chicago, the University of Chicago, and they were kind of in dueling perspectives. I remember. But I was in the midst of that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, there was a lot of debate about economics and about monetarism and Keynesianism and whatnot, about regulation and laissez-faire and whatnot. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, I've kind of fallen away from economics, to be honest with you. These last 10, 15 years, I've become a guy that talks more about the culture issues myself. And now with the new administration, Trump, and with the tariffs and the changes in economic policy, there's more talk. It's very arch, it's very partisan, but there's more talk. But yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, I want to distinguish between a specialized program of graduate study at MIT and a general education program for undergraduates at Brown. I think if I were to compare economics PhD study at Brown today to that at MIT in the early It would be a different kind of comparison.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
There, the issue would be how the field has changed, the questions that are prominent, the techniques that are employed to investigate them. And there, I would focus a lot on the revolution of data analysis that...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
laptop and desktop computers, the data availability and so on, and also the change in the set of questions that people are asking, which are applied in our experimental economics, for example, has become a big thing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Nobel Prizes are given in development economics and stuff like that, where people are trying to figure out how to make the best use of resources to raise living standards in poor countries and stuff. And economics was more self-consciously theoretical and abstract when I was a student. You could make a living...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So I remember as I did my undergraduate at Northwestern University, graduated in 1972, the intensity of the intellectual experience of coming to the university. Yeah. I remember encountering the German language. I remember studying mathematics and economics and philosophy and politics. And I remember books. And I remember there being a certain devotion to the life of the mind. Yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
without ever carrying one of those boxes of computer cards over to the computer processing center. You could just with a pencil and a yellow pad sit and off the top of one's head, as it were, invent models of interesting economic phenomena and get yourself published in the journal and make tenure and all of that. And I think it'd be much, much harder to do that now.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, I think on the whole, it is a good thing. But that would be if I were comparing economics in 2025 to economics in 1975, much more empirical, much more data intensive, much more applied, and a wide range of questions.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But if I were comparing college in the period when I was a young student to now, I think the assault that we're seeing, the confrontation that we're seeing of elite higher education with anti-woke sentiment coming from the Trump administration and
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Critics like the young Christopher Ruffo, but there are many, bespeaks the ideological drift that has characterized higher education in the last decades. It's become much more political, much more self-consciously radical, much more anti-establishment and, as it were, woke, faddish. You know, I've lived through the French theorist and deconstruction and whatnot. I'm not a literary or humanist.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I'm a social scientist, but I can see, looking across the aisle, as it were, at what my colleagues are saying. are doing, and I've lived through the anti-racism mania. I've lived through the various enthusiasms of feminism and sexual liberation and whatnot. The debate about capitalism, you know, is a different argument now than it was when I was coming along.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
When I was coming along, you read Karl Marx because you wanted to be educated and you knew that that was an important part of the intellectual inheritance, but you read it with a skeptical eye because you know that while the radical agitator and bomb-thrower of Marx was an important historical figure, you didn't think that the economic analysis was really very cogent or incisive.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And you didn't read it as a Bible. You read it as a, okay, there is a problem here about how to understand the implications of the transformation, which is industrialization and so on. Yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
There are real issues about how the fruits of economic cooperation get divided amongst the participants in the process, the people who bring capital, the people who own natural resources and land, the people who rely on their labor as the source of their income. And there's an analytical issue about how to think that through. And we saw Marx as something of an oddball in that respect.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I think in the center of the economics establishment, that would be the judgment. But I think I can't stop the sociologists from reading Marx. I can't stop the anthropologists from reading Marx. I can't stop the literary critics from reading Marx. I can't stop the historians from reading Marx. And they've taken that kind of sensibility, that kind of...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
a criticism of established social relations and the kind of radicalism and enthusiasm, as I say, for the fads that come along of equality and so on. They've taken it where they've taken it. The university has become, to a certain degree, captured by that sensibility, and we're seeing a backlash against that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I don't see how you can say that women were not empowered. If, you know, we go to, who is it? Betty Friedan or Simone de Beauvoir or somebody like that. And this set of issues that they were talking about. And you look at where ideas are about equality for women now and the appropriate role of women in society. political and social life.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think you can say, I don't know if you want to say they were liberated because they are confronted with challenges in life that are intrinsic to the, it seems to me, to the way in which we reproduce and the way in which the species has evolved and Some of that stuff is hardwired and it's going to always be a part of the issue.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But I think the presumptions about the entitlement of women to an opportunity to fully develop their human potential is a move forward. Were Blacks liberated? Well, I just read an interesting book by Jason Riley, the conservative African-American Wall Street Journal editorialist. He calls it the myth of affirmative action, and he basically argues in the spirit of the great Thomas Sowell that—
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
You know, Blacks were really doing pretty well between 1940 and 1960. And when you look at the acceleration of wages and the breakdown of barriers of segregation and whatnot, that that was a golden age for African-American advancement and that advancement after 1960 happened.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I don't know that we've lost that, but it's, I think, less intense for our students today than it was when I was in college. It was the shadow of the Second World War. It was still only 25 years after the end of the conflict. That had, I think, its effect. It was the Vietnam era, and that had its effect.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Are we really going to go to war with Iran and turn the world economy upside down? Is it really Jim Crow 2.0 if they want to ask for a driver's license before you cast a ballot in Georgia?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
was less rapid and that the big, the ballyhoo about liberation of African-Americans associated with Black power and the civil rights movement and the advent of affirmative action is overstated. That there were downsides, significant downsides to those developments, both in terms of abetting economic empowerment for African-Americans, but also in terms of the
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
credibility of the political claims that blacks were making on the rest of the society, and things became more partisan and divisive. And this is Riley's argument, and I have some sympathy for it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, you know, if you were to pick up a typical work wanted ad page in 1960 in a major American city, you would see explicit kind of no blacks need apply type language. If you were to look at controlling for the skills that people had, the anticipated earnings of a worker, you would see that their being African American was a negative and it was a non-trivial negative in 1960.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
If you were to look at the way that housing market operated or at the allocation of public educational resources, you would see significant discriminatory barriers that impeded African-American development of their skills and participation in the society. And all of that has changed. So that's, I think, for the good without any question.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
That having changed, let's call it the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the change in the ethos of the country with the rise of the civil rights movement and so on, that having changed, the question becomes, we get to 1970, let's say, and the question becomes, what next? And there, I think the story is less clear. And I think that there are developments that are very distressing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think when you, there's a wonderful book that I want to plug here called The World of Patience Gromes, G-R-O-M-E-S Gromes. by a man called Scott Davis. Patience Grohms is a woman born in the late 19th century, like 1890 or something like that, to a yeoman farmer, a Black person who owned his own land, her father. And she's a princess. She takes piano lessons. She dresses up for church on Sunday.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
They have a very strict behavioral code. They're devout Christians. They are Booker T. Washington-esque in their orientation. And she marries and migrates to Richmond, Virginia and starts a family in the 1920s. And Scott Davis, the author of this great book, traces her family life through the early 1960s. And what you see for Patience Groms is her kids struggle.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Even though it was the Vietnam era, it wasn't, in my experience, as political as I see the university has become today.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The neighborhood, which is not wealthy, but stable. Her husband works for the railroad. He's got a very good job. Neighborhoods declines. Model cities and various kinds of federal programs come through that end up remaking the community in ways that actually work in an adverse effect.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Public housing, which is initiated with the idea that the poor were going to be sheltered, ends up creating ghetto-type phenomenon.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The kids who used to be interested in earning the respect of their peers by keeping their nose clean, keeping their nose to the grindstone, not having kids before they were married and stuff like that, end up embracing a much looser and less helpful set of cultural practices. And by the time you get to the 1970s, it's a mess. So, there's a lot of mess.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I mean, these are statistics that people cite all the time. Black family life used to be much healthier than it is, out of what, like, births and all of that. Of course, there was crime. Du Bois, the Philadelphia Negro, at the turn of the 20th century, is quick to point out that there was crime.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But the violence, the gangs, the drugs, the lawlessness, the contempt for order, this was a development that we can see emerging in the post-civil rights environment. So it's a mixed bag, I think. I mean, you know, you can speculate, and people do, about the sources of this dissolution, and I think they are many.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think they are the incentives of welfare transfer programs, which encouraged people to live in ways that were ultimately not socially productive. I think the change in the larger culture in which these liberatory sexual revolutions took gave the back of their hand to a set of conventions, expectations, and restraints that were, yes, freedom-limiting.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I mean, you couldn't just do anything you wanted to do and maintain the respect of your peers, but were also order-inducing. freedom-limiting but order-inducing, and provided a framework within which people could manage the difficult problem of how do we live decently? What do we do with our temptations? How do we restrain our appetites?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I got to campus in 1970 at Northwestern. I started out at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1965. I dropped out. I attended a community college for a couple of years, and then I re-enrolled at a major university as a scholarship student in 1970, graduated in 1972.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
How do we understand and then live up to our responsibilities? And I think that's a society-wide development, not just something that happens in Black communities. But I think the politics of racial claiming, the victim psychology and mentality that ends up with reparations, as you're arguing, point, I don't think those are healthy things. These are things I've written about in my own work.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
They got to pat themselves on the back about being virtuous, even if what they were doing at the end of the day wasn't helping to solve the problem.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Here's what I think, Tucker. I think, and I've written about this in essays and so on. I think that there are basically two dispositions that you can have in thinking about the persistence of racial inequality, what I call the bias narrative. And the bias narrative is that we're behind because they have kept us out.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And that affords your white liberal do-gooders an opportunity to side on the historical imperative of let's stop the bias. Let's fight racism, anti-racism. And there's the development narrative. And the development narrative basically says that
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The long history of enslavement, Jim Crow exclusion and segregation has left African Americans with an imperative to develop our human potential more fully. We were denied the complete opportunity to do so. The doors, however, have opened substantially and the ball is in our court.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
That is the existential challenge, in my opinion, that African Americans have faced for a half century, since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, to grasp the nettle and to seize the imperative of measuring up, of fulfilling our potential of development.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The white liberals that you were just referring to, who are interested in being on the right side of history by doing the right thing by Black people, embrace the bias narrative and give us an excuse to not take up the challenge of the development narrative. Meanwhile, the country is moving on. The world is moving on. The world gets small. You get globalization.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The world gets shaken by one after another technological revolution, which changes everything. And we're in the midst of one right now with the AI and all that that's going on. The demography changes. You get tens of millions of people coming from non-European ports of call and making their lives in this country. There are more Hispanics by far than there are Blacks in the United States right now.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The Asians... if you can speak in those generic terms, are here to stay. The world is getting small. So not confronting the development challenge, continuing to take the victim stance, continuing to rely on the largesse and the beneficence of supposedly supportive white liberals is a disaster. For black people.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
It's not a disaster for the what I call Negro cognoscenti, the anointed ones, the Michelle Obamas of the world, with respect, as much as I can muster. Not a disaster for those who are the ambassadors to white America on behalf of black America, like your friend Al Sharpton. But a disaster for that kid who can't read.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
A disaster for that mother with three children and she doesn't know how she's going to feed them and she hasn't gotten an education. A disaster for the gangbanger who's running around firing his pistol aimlessly out the window at a gang rival and killing a three-year-old sitting on her auntie's lap. It's a disaster for those people. There's no escaping the imperative to develop.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
There's no substitute for being effective, for having a mastery over skill, for having solved the basic problem of life, which again, I say is how do I comport myself in a way that is both dignified and consistent with my own and my children's prosperity? That problem has to be faced. It still has to be faced.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, frankly, I do. First of all, not everybody was a protester or enmeshed in the ethos of protest. Some of us were just trying to get to class. In my own case, I was a full-time employee at a printing plant and a young father with a wife and two children, even as I was taking classes at Northwestern. My case is very unusual. I didn't really have time to protest.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I don't disagree with that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, well, who would blame them? Conservatives. Yeah. Republicans would blame them. And they're racist, you know.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And so did King. No, I have enormous respect for the straight-backed, manly, autonomous, independent, responsibility-embracing posture of Malcolm X. You know, he says, nobody is coming to save us. we had better take care of our own. Are you raising your children? Did you pick up the trash in front of your house? Will you start a business? You don't have wealth.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
You're waiting with your hand out for somebody to give you wealth. Why don't you start a business? Why don't you take care of your own community? You know, get busy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But it wasn't even for the other students. It wasn't all consuming. There were intense, engaged protest students, but there were also kids just going about their business.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah. I don't know. I'm not a historian, but I see what you say. And I do think there are aspects of his message that are extremely threatening to established order. He was a Muslim. He was succeeded in his leadership of that movement, ultimately, by Louis Farrakhan, who was a notorious anti-Semite, quote-unquote. Yes. So, there's that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But Malcolm X was uncompromising about, well, you remember his comment after the Kennedy assassination, chickens come home to roost and whatnot. What do you think he meant by that?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think he meant U.S. entailment in global affairs has created enemies. The U.S. has undertaken various operations that are in effect responsible for the blowback that we're seeing. That's what I think he meant.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I'm just trying to understand the world. Are we ever going to see all the documents related to that? No, of course not.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I do, and it's deeply disquieting to me, actually, because it means that the reality that I take for granted is orchestrated or manufactured, and there are forces, I would have to presume dark forces, at work that I don't fully understand. And then if this is not what it appears to be, what else that I take for granted is a charade or a fantasy.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I was a clerk. They called me a timekeeper and a bonus estimator. We had these decks of IBM punch cards, and I would write on each one the employee's name, the number of hours they spent on what task, and sometimes I'd have to estimate whether or not their productivity count entitled them to bonus payment.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I don't really know the answer to that question. I'm going to make a personal reference. I married my wife, LaJuan, whom you've met.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I would say that that relationship has been a wake-up call for me in that she brings a perspective that's very different from my conventional... I read the New York Times, and I pretty much believe when I'm reading. I read the Washington Post. I read the Wall Street Journal. I read the Chronicles of Higher Education. I, you know... And, you know, that's what they're saying.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And, you know, I take it seriously. And I watch television. I watch the Sunday shows. And she's like, man, that is all manufactured consent. She's going to pull out Noam Chomsky on me. So I say all that to say, while I am not necessarily going to parrot her perspective on things, they have caused me, encountering her perspective has caused me to revisit some of my own assumptions.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, I think so. Sure.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Because it turns out that, and this actually relates to the book that I have coming out from Polity Books called Self-Censorship in a couple of months. It makes me aware of the fact that the discussion of controversial and sensitive matters that is sanitized and acceptable in the mainstream venues is only the tip of the iceberg of legitimate discussion and debate.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And that there, if you don't do your quote unquote, your own research, if you don't exert an effort, um, if, if you don't look around, if you don't listen to, uh, alternative voices, uh, if you don't access independent media, which we're our wash, a wash in now, but which is relatively new last quarter century or so, um, you're being led around by the nose.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
You're, you're, you're being, uh, how did Malcolm X, you've been bamboozled. You're being hoodwinked. You're, you're, uh, I'm not exercising your full critical capacities. You have to exert the effort to look beyond what's right in front of your nose.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
and take at the end of the shift my deck of IBM punch cards to the offices where the young women would key punch them up, and then they would go into the process of the mainframe computer congestion. It was pretty antiquated, but that's how we kept track of the accounting. So I was a clerk.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
A little bit. Yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, for example, I pretty much take what my government says to be, until proven otherwise, true and reliable. And I have reason now to be more skeptical about that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, man, I mean, we've been at war since forever. Yes. Do we really need to be at war since forever? There were no weapons of mass destruction. Were there?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
In Iraq. Are we really going to go to war with Iran and turn the world economy upside down? Is that what we're about to do? These are important questions. Must we risk nuclear war with a nuclear-armed Russia over the conflict in Ukraine as an imperative to prevent the reemergence of a dominant force coming from the East to occupy civilization? I'm being told, or... Let me get more prosaic.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Is it really Jim Crow 2.0 if they want to ask for a driver's license before you cast a ballot in Georgia? I mean, if I don't ask myself some of those questions, I'll be being led around by the nose over the cliff.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah. I got used to being the contrarian and thinking of myself as the guy who thought outside the box and who was not bound by convention. But I came to realize though that I wasn't quite as independent a thinker as I imagined myself to be and that there were traps, you know. So, yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So, I'm going to talk about my relationship with the Manhattan Institute.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The Manhattan Institute is a think tank based in New York City, published in a magazine called City Journal, puts out reports and houses scholars who are investigating different aspects of social policy, largely urban policy. related issues. And they've been around for a while.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Did you?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, they were great. They are a highbrow, serious, intellectually robust, critical, from the right observer about all manner of issues, about housing, about crime, about welfare issues. and other things, mostly American domestic politics.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I signed on there a few years ago as a senior fellow and my podcast, The Glenn Show, which I put out content every week, was being sponsored by the Manhattan Institute.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Everything. This was R.R. Donnelly and Sons, a big concern. Lakeside Press is what they called the campus. A couple of miles, three miles south of the loop on the lakefront in Chicago, maybe a dozen or so factory-style buildings.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, that's correct. They worry about race issues. They worry about crime and punishment-type issues. They worry about housing, about city politics, and things like that. And they have, you know, estimable scholars who are a part of the shop that produces these studies and commentaries and so on. And I signed on there as a senior fellow, John Pulse, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And we parted company recently at their behest, both their sponsorship of my podcast and their employment of me as a senior fellow because of some of the public comments that I have made at my podcast and some of the people whom I have interviewed there, where the issue of the conflict in Palestine and Middle East and Gaza and Israel has come up.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I ran afoul of the sensibility of my friend, Raihan Salam, who's president of the Manhattan Institute, wrote me saying that we review our scholarly relationships from time to time. This is practically a quote for productivity, and there's no question about my productivity. I've put a dozen articles in their city journal over the last five years. and shared priorities.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And so I assume it's that we don't share priorities. And the priorities that I assume we don't share have to do with me inviting an historian colleague of mine on the show, The Glenn Show, to talk about the post-October 7th, 2023 incursion of the IDF into Gaza, which he characterized in the same kind of language that
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
international human rights organizations have used as being, if not genocide, then in the same ballpark and something that one needs to be concerned about from a human rights perspective. He thinks the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice are right to take initiatives that are holding Israeli officials to account for the prosecution of that conflict.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I had him on the show. Now, who is he? His name is Omer Bartov.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
He's a student of the Holocaust, of the Nazi extermination campaign in Eastern Europe, and has written books about that. And he's been my colleague for 20 years at Brown. I've gotten to know him, and I knew that he was engaging these questions in a controversial manner, and I wanted to hear from him, so I had him on the show.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
railroad tracks running alongside huge rolls of printing paper, these monstrous machines, which were the presses, craftsmen everywhere from the people who ran the presses to the people who engraved the plates to the people who They cultivated the photographs that had to be made into images. They printed Time magazine, Life magazine, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek. They printed telephone books.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
No, and there were objections coming from the staff at MI, and they asked that we not, in promoting the show, make mention of the Institute of the Manhattan Institute in connection with this particular episode. And there were other incidents. The Black American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates came out with a book called The Message, in which he describes writing about politics.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And there are several chapters. One reviews his first visit to Africa and talks about his encounter with the Senegalese and the complex dynamic of an African American life. thinking of himself as an African, but not really being an African in Africa.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Another essay describes him going to a small town in South Carolina that had banned one of his books because it's critical race theory, and finding that the people there were more complicated and interesting and malleable, that is open to discourse than he would have imagined. and sort of exposing the complexity of this moment in our cultural history of anti-racism and anti-anti-racism.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But the main bulk of the book is devoted in Coates' book, The Message, to recounting his experience as a visitor on the West Bank of Palestine. And he's appalled by what he sees, and he says so. And in conversation with John McWhorter, who is a regular conversation partner of mine at the podcast, I allowed us how I admired the book.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I said it was not without its flaws, and it should be understood that I have been sharply critical of Ta-Nehisi Coates' other writings.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
He had a very famous essay in The Atlantic, I think 2014 or 2015, called The Case for Reparations, which I objected to and said so at length. And then he published a bestselling book called Between the World and Me, which was very widely praised and widely read. And I had deep problems with it, which I discussed at length on the podcast.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So I'm generally disposed to be a conservative critic of cults. But I admired the book, and I admired in particular the essay in which he reflected on what he saw in the West Bank. I didn't necessarily agree with all of his sensibilities and so on, but I thought it was an interesting, provocative, insightful, humane engagement with a difficult, very difficult set of issues.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, the party line on the book including at the Manhattan Institute, is this is unspeakable. This is a black guy who doesn't know what the F he's talking about, wandering around on the West Bank in the company of some anti-Zionist Jews, and coming back and talking about it as if it were, he uses the word apartheid. Colts uses the word apartheid. He said, what I saw in the West Bank.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
This is the West Bank, not Gaza. was reminiscent to me of what I saw in South Africa. And I didn't like what I saw, and it's wrong. And I'm going to tell you why I think it's wrong. And I don't care what account you're giving of the history. He has read some of the history, but he's not deeply versed in the historical record of how
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The circumstance in Palestine has come to be what it is, but his basic point is, look, I'm telling you what I'm seeing there is not healthy, it's not humane, and it's not right. And I had some appreciation for his courage to say so and for the artful way in which he said so. And I said so on the show.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
They printed Sears catalogs. And it was a massive operation.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah. Yeah, I just basically said, this is something that has to be reckoned with. I said to John, my partner in conversation, who's also an African American. He teaches at Columbia University and writes a regular piece, a newsletter for the New York Times. And he took exception, and he and I, John and I, went back and forth about this.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And it came to me saying what I actually thought about what was happening in Gaza. And what I thought was October 7th, 2023 was horrific. What Hamas did was barbaric. I'm against it. I have no grief for it whatsoever. However, what I saw proceeding in the aftermath of that was a campaign of collective punishment that was horrific in the extreme.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I didn't want to have my country having anything to do with it. And I wasn't afraid to say so. Now, I didn't say it quite that directly, but that's pretty much the burden of what it is I had to say.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yes, it was a dozen buildings or so spread out over a mile along the lakefront, maybe three quarters of a mile. Is it still there? I think it's condos now. Of course it is. And in fact, the guys that, you know, the union guys who I worked with, I wasn't in the union, I was a clerk. could see it coming. They could see the jobs going to South Carolina and then going to Southeast Asia.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
No, no. I basically took up the cause that has animated a lot of agitation, not just on college campuses in the United States, but in public opinion throughout the world to say, stop it. I called for a ceasefire with the release of the hostages, of course. But I said, this is not what a civilized country should be doing. And I object.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
No, you know, and a lot of Israelis agree with me. For sure.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah. I mean, Omer, of course, but, um, many.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Um, so what, what happened next? Well, next, the outfit called Air Wars, A-I-R-W-A-R-S, Air Wars, which is an initiative to study the consequences of aerial bombardment in conflict, put out a report documenting the extensive civilian casualties that were being engendered by the bombing attacks that Israel was conducting in Gaza.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I had one of the people who was sympathetic to the report on the show to discuss the report about civilian casualties. Basically, he was arguing that the number of women and children killed relative to the number of combatants killed was exceptionally high. and reflected tactics that you could question as to whether or not they were absolutely necessary.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I mean, he made a collective punishment argument. And I had him in a debate. This guy's name is Andrew Cockerell. He's a historian, Ph.D. student at the London School of Economics. I had him on with Eli Lake, who's a journalist, writes about Middle East and other international affairs.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, well, he's not very prominent.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, both sides were represented, and they had their back and forth about how do you interpret the data on civilian casualties and the bombardment, aerial bombardment.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And then I did a kind of me directly to the camera, 10 minute or 15 minute reflection on the interview as a bonus feature of the podcast, which we make available to paying subscribers and where I interact with someone from my staff who basically interviews me about the interview that I did. And I was asked, did I learn anything from Eli Lake? And I said, what was I going to learn?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I basically recounted my view, which I've already described here, of what has been proceeding there in Gaza as a collective punishment that I don't think is justified. And I said to him, I said, no, he said nothing that dissuade me from that point of view. And that got posted.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I got notified the next day that the Manhattan Institute was discontinuing its relationship with me as a senior fellow. How did they tell you? I got a note from Raihan saying, as I've mentioned, that we do review our scholar connections from time to time for productivity and shared priorities. And we've decided not to continue to work with you. The next day? Yeah. Did he call you? No.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
No, it was a two paragraph email.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
They didn't see the technology revolution coming that made a lot of what they were doing obsolete, but they knew that their days were numbered.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I haven't talked to him since.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, I like Raihan a lot, actually. I'm a little bit disappointed about this. Now, let me just say this. But what do you think that was? I assume it was somebody saying, this guy's got to go. And I don't know who the somebody is. I assume that that's somebody sitting on the board of the Manhattan Institute, or it may be that the internal deliberations had been...
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The warning signs had been flashing for some months. And finally, this was over the top and more than people could tolerate. It may be the John Paulson senior fellow, John Paulson or someone like him that is a heavy hitter who puts up funds for the Institute's operations said, this is unacceptable. You got to do something about this. But I'm speculating and saying that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I want to say something else. Tucker, which is that I'm not mad at anybody. I am sobered, and it's a cold bucket of water in the face, and it's a reminder to me about the environment that we all operate in. The Manhattan Institute had been good to me. They helped me get my memoir written. They have supported my work.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I've made friends there, so it's not as if I'm feeling that I've been disrespected, although I imagine that the positions that I took on this issue just were simply not tolerable, and this has been the consequence of that.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Were they mad about it? Uh, yeah. Uh, and to a certain extent resigned, uh, but you know, the fight, the good fight, you know, resist, but the wheel was turning. Amazing.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
No, in my opinion, not at all. You know, the issue of Israel and the nature of the October 7th attack and the political climate that's been created since and the advent of vigorous protests on American campuses and
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The need to marshal, you know, all hands on deck here for the project, the project of Zionism, a project of defending the project of establishing the state of Israel, which is under threat, requires people to get in line. And I think that's what's going on here.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think my detractors, and I now speculate, wanted me to be a neutral arbiter and not to be a partisan, not to take a side. I think they wanted me to hear from Barry Wise or Douglas Murray or some such person to give the case against the position that I had stated. I think also that I'm dabbling in something that people spend their lives on. And the feeling was out of my depth.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And it's not, you know, you want to talk about race? You want to talk about affirmative action? You want to talk about reparations? You want to talk about crime and punishment in American cities? Sure. Glenn Lowry. He's, you know, the guy that we conservatives can rely upon to give a critical assessment of those issues. You want to talk about Gaza? You want to talk about Israel?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
You want to talk about Zionism? You want to talk about the West Bank? You want to talk about the occupation? Who is he? This is not his bailiwick. And I think also that the fact that I'm an African American who embodies a kind of position of... moral critique of anti-racism and so on, whose prominent identity as a, not a wild-eyed leftist, but a person of
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
centrist to right-of-center sensibility, who, however, speaks out on behalf of the Palestinian position. They're going to call me a Hamas sympathizer, you know? I'm not a Hamas sympathizer. I'm, like I said, appalled by what I've seen proceed in Gaza and don't want to be associated with it. I don't want my country associated with it. I think it's wrong. I think it's excessive.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think it's punitive in the extreme. I think it's inhumane. I don't think it's necessary. Well, defend that position, will you? People will say. I think as a black intellectual of somewhat conservative sensibility, it's way out of line for me to be taking that kind of a position. I think that's why a point had to be made.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Not to exaggerate my own importance, yes.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Now, I talk about this in my memoir that came out last year, Late Admissions, Confessions of a Black Conservative. I review the bidding of my life. And yeah, I tell a story. So I'm at the community college before getting to Northwestern. The year is 1970, the spring of 1970, the strike, the incursion into Cambodia and the strike. Yes. And I'm taking calculus and I'm loving it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, that's ethnic cleansing, apartheid, genocide, world court, international court of justice. I think the authorization of a certain kind of perspective that, of course, remember the huge debate about Zionism being racism. I'm not making that claim.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I was in Durban, South Africa in 2001 for the World Conference Against Racism. And I remember Colin Powell as Secretary of State deciding not to attend the World Conference Against Racism because of the controversy that had emerged about racism. anti-Zionist elements wanting to make a point out of Zionism being racism at that conference, and Powell wouldn't attend it.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I didn't endorse that position then, and I'm not endorsing it now. I think that's too facile and ahistorical of an equation to draw. But I think that's the thing that the defenders of the Zionist project fear getting a camel's nose under the tent. The idea that there could be some South Africa-like indictment. of the political project that could emerge and could gain credence.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And that's not acceptable. I mean, that's why I think the not implausible set of observations about the settler colonialism aspect of the Zionist project must be nipped in the bud. It has to be seen as absolutely ridiculous.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And people who teach it, and I taught at the Watson Institute for International Affairs at Brown as an economist for years, teaching international studies and development studies kinds of courses. And it's this sentiment of European influence throughout the global south and whatnot gets applied in the context of Israel-Palestine by some critics, and they are now on the run.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
The critics who would apply that sentiment are part of this woke incumbency in American higher education, which is being run out of town on a rail as we speak. And I think these things are all somehow connected with one another.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, I could ask you. I mean, I can only speculate about why that is. I think, though, the influence of the Israel lobby, as it's called in some quarters, is not insubstantial. climate of opinion is influenced by a desire to avoid being accused of anti-Semitism.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think that powerful people can exert their influence in one way or another, and the anticipation of that influence being exerted is enough to keep people
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And there's an exam coming. You loved calculus? Pardon? I loved calculus. Yeah, I was a math major and calculus and trigonometry and abstract algebra and differential equations.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, some people have done it. Nobody at the Manhattan Institute.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
We're in the land of speculation. I don't really know what happened. I don't know what conversations were had and I don't know what was said. I would have appreciated a call from Raihan.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I do seem to have noticed that, yeah.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
It's all good. I am at the end of a long career. I have, you know, a pretty good reputation as a scholar and as a public critic. My podcast is flourishing. I'm okay.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I am, although independent media gives me hope. Everybody has got the opportunity to be heard now, and pockets of influence can develop, emerge, and flourish. And you can't stifle the conversation in the same way that you used to be able to. because you could control a few of the portals of dissemination of information. Now that's not any longer possible.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I think it's going to just get more capacious. I think we're, I don't know, it's not my field, you know, about media, but I think we're on the verge of something, you know, revolutionary. Everybody's got an encyclopedia and a global translator in their pocket. Everybody can basically talk to everybody almost without restraint.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Oh, man, it was just fun solving those problems. I get it. I got a feeling of mastery in solving the problems. And they're tricks in calculus. How do I reduce this expression to a form that I can actually integrate it and apply what I know? I liked it. And I had a great teacher. Mr. Andres was his name. He was an engineer. He had retired recently.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So I actually wish that I were going to live long enough to see what would come of this. But I'm 76, soon to be 77. What happens to the universities? Well, there's a confrontation now. And I just read an interesting piece by Peter Berkowitz. I don't know if you know who he is. He's at the Hoover Institution. He's a political theorist.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And he's talking about the Harvard Trump administration confrontation. And he's saying on the one hand, yeah, Harvard had gotten a little lax in its enforcement of restraint on the anti-Israel demonstrators and had gotten very woke in its kind of... latter-day modernist relativism of the humanities and the social sciences. And those are things that can be critiqued, he says.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
On the other hand, he says the Trump administration's cancellation midstream of commitments to funding and wholesale assault and demanding to be able to dictate curriculum and hiring decisions of Harvard was over the top, and some of it he doubted was going to survive in the courts.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
He says, in effect, this is almost a quote, both sides stand to get bloodied if they end up in court with one another for different reasons. So what about a compromise? And the compromise would involve, according to Berkowitz's thinking, basically Harvard conceding that, yeah, its curriculum had gotten too far left and anti-Western.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And there should be an effort to stand up a school within the university of general education whose purposes would be more liberal. affirming of the Western cultural inheritance, and that while the school would be an independent entity that has had its own faculty and whatnot, the undergraduates would be required to take some courses in the school as a part of what a Harvard education would mean.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So that's a kind of a concession to the critics of the drift left of the curriculum and faculty. and that the administration would back off of its peremptory gangster-type tactics of trying to gut the whole enterprise. And, you know, I think that's worth thinking about. What happens to the university?
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, I've said recently in a public statement that I think, you know, if you ask what's going on in the university outside of the politicized discourses, what's going on in the sciences and so on, What's going on in the social sciences at the very best places in terms of the state of economics as a discipline, for example, psychology as a discipline, for example.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
What's going on in the humanities where people are writing important books, where they're discovering new things about history, where they are examining in a critical way. Culture, not all of it is from the left. The US universities are sources of excellence and of exquisite human achievement. we have the best institutions in the world.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And that's a tremendous boon, both in terms of the straight-up people want to come here and study, but also in terms of the spillover benefits, and not only in the sciences and engineering and the patents, but also in the quality of the American cultural footprint in global affairs.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
We don't want to squander that over a politicized campaign to stamp out wokeness inspired by the fact that people don't like anti-IDF demonstrations emanating from the student body. That's the tail wagging the dog here. Take the long view. We want to cultivate these excellent centers of human intellectual achievement. And I think that's the position I try to defend.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
He was a Northwestern alum, which is how I ended up at Northwestern. He referred me to their admissions committee. And I'd go to his office hours and he'd show me problems and tricks and, you know, we were having a good time.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, I'm a teacher who taught his last class at Brown University after nearly 50 years of college teaching. In that last class, I engaged my students in open-ended conversation. We talked about ideas, and I reminisced about what we had done over the course of the semester. The course was on race and inequality, and we'd read widely.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I got a letter from one of my students recently appreciating me and hoping that my post-teaching endeavors would flourish and saying that I had changed his life.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
that I had shown him something that he didn't realize before, which was the fact that even though he recoiled against the conservative tone of some of my arguments, that he realized that there was stuff that he had never thought about before that he needed to think about. And he said that he was better off for thinking about them, inspired by me, inspired by my example.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
He says, your eloquence, this is me patting myself on the back, but I'm just telling you what the kid said, and your passion, you know, and this is from face-to-face encounter twice a week for 90 minutes with 20 people sitting around a table and me taking them by the hand and leading them through a corpus of work on a sensitive and important set of questions.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I don't know that YouTube can do that for you. When AI gets to the point that the bot on the other side of the screen has the same degree of empathy, eloquence, erudition, passion, and curiosity that I have, well, they won't need me, will they? Professor, thank you. My pleasure, Tom. Thank you very much.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But in any case, I'm saying I wanted to study for the exam, and the librarian had barricaded herself in because she was afraid that the rampaging students who were all up in arms about the strike were going to somehow come in and deface the library and so on. So she had barricaded herself, and I had to persuade her.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
It took me 15 minutes to persuade her to open the door and let me in so that I could sit down and study because I had to get to that 4 o'clock shift, the second shift that day, to my job, and I needed to use what hours I had to study.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, I was working second and sometimes third shift, but mostly second shift, yeah, 4 to midnight, right. How old were your kids? Lisa and Tammy were born in 1967 and 1968, respectively. So this was 1970. They were two and three. Did your wife work? She did. She worked at the post office.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
We had our hands full, to be sure. We were very young parents, and we were determined to improve ourselves, and we were doing the best we could.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, first of all, I thought the war sucked.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
You know, I was against the war. Fair. And I thought the protests were justified. I mean, Kent State, you know, these kids got shot and all that. But I thought also that a lot of the participation in the protest was kind of indulgent and saddish and, you know, it was a fun thing to be doing. It was a part of a kind of manufactured thing. alienation that I didn't share.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
You know, I wasn't about to burn my draft card. The guys that I was working with, most of them were ethnic at the printing plant. Most of them were, you know, Italian or Irish or Jewish or Polish. or Greek second-generation immigrants to the United States, and they were pretty conservative.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But there was the Black Power stuff that was going on as well in those years, and I was enmeshed in that on the South Side of Chicago and had family members who were pretty radical. So, you know, I was, if you had to give me a label, I would have been left of center. I would have been a liberal, but I was mainly a nerd.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
They were proud of me. Well, I graduated with a very strong academic record from the high school. I got a scholarship to study at the Illinois Institute of Technology. My girlfriend, who became my wife and the mother of my first two children, had dropped out of high school to give birth, and they were worried that I was going to lose my way.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So when I and my father, my mother and father broke up when I was quite young, five years old, but my dad was an important part of my life, and I very much... wanted his respect and approval. And he, you know, when I told him that Charlene was pregnant, he said, he rolled his eyes and, you know, he said, you have to do the right thing and take care of that kid and stuff.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
But this is not the way that you, you know, I had imagined you living your life. And when I told him I was dropping out of the Illinois Institute of Technology and going to work, he said, well, let's, you better have a plan.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
So when I finally kind of put myself together and did well at the community college and then got the scholarship at Northwestern and then made the dean's list in my first semester, he was like, okay, this is better. Yeah. They were proud of me. And when I graduated with awards and stuff, I was the prize-winning mathematics major in my class of 1972 at Northwestern.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
And I got admitted to MIT as a graduate student that very same year. They were over the moon. They loved the idea that I was overcoming the odds.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
My dad is no longer living. He was a lawyer and accountant. He worked for the Internal Revenue Service. Sorry, Tuck. Spent his life as a federal employee, as a bureaucrat. He worked his way up to being the director of the Kansas City Service Center, which is a huge company. income tax return processing operation in Kansas City. And it suited him. He was a revenuer.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
I'm telling you, man, this guy would drive around. He lived in Overland Park, Kansas, which is a tony suburb of Kansas City. And he'd drive around and he'd see a boat sitting in somebody's driveway. And he'd ask himself, I wonder how that guy paid for that boat. And I'm not going to put it past him to go and look up the thing and maybe direct an audit in that direction.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah. He believed in it very religiously. Yeah. What were his politics? He was a moderate Democrat, but not especially political. He was mainly a bureaucrat. I mean, he loved the internal politics of who's getting promoted, what budget is going on, who's the regional director, and how much power has so-and-so got, and what about this or that. You know, he loved calling people on the carpet.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
He was a patent lawyer. George C. Scott. Yeah. That was his favorite movie. The scene where Patton slaps the recruit, that was his favorite scene.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Yeah, something like that. So did you go to MIT? I did go to MIT. I did a PhD in economics at MIT in the 70s.
The Tucker Carlson Show
Glenn Loury: Ousted for Opposing Middle Eastern Wars, MLK Files, & the One Thing Malcolm X Got Right
Well, in economics, MIT was riding high then. There were people, Robert Solow, Paul Samuelson, Franco Modigliani, Robert Merton, all of whom became Nobel laureates in the fullness of time. Samuelson had been honored in 69 or 70, I think. It was a very, very strong department of economics. It was very Jewish, both the faculty and the student body, and that was noticeable to me.