Why people assume this conservative, black academic has a white wife

When people learn that African-American intellectual Glenn Loury is politically conservative, they tend to jump to conclusions. Some presume he voted for Donald Trump (he didn’t – although he believes the Democrats deserved their loss in 2024). Others accuse him of being “an Uncle Tom” or “an apologist for white racism” (he abhors race-based prejudice – while rejecting affirmative action as a means of redress). But the most common misconception Loury encounters is that he must be married to a white woman.

“People just assume that I’m somehow estranged or alienated from my blackness,” says the economist and academic, whose new book, Self-Censorship, was published on September 1 in Australia. “But I’m no less black [on account of my political beliefs].”

Indeed, Loury’s wife, LaJuan, whom he wed in 2017, is both black and left-wing.

“It’s definitely a source of tension in our relationship, but it’s a fruitful source of tension that keeps me alive and on my toes,” Loury says via Zoom from his home in Providence, Rhode Island. “We’re always able to resolve it; we never go to bed angry.”

Last year, Loury published a memoir titled Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. His unvarnished honesty left The New York Times agog. In a lengthy review, the paper listed some of his more colourful disclosures, from picking up streetwalkers and smoking crack in a Harvard faculty office to cuckolding a friend and “keeping a bachelor pleasure dome decorated with a bearskin rug, a brass four-poster bed and a fat marijuana plant”.

In that book, Loury also detailed his political evolution as a Reaganite who swung from the right to the left and back again. All of which lends him a unique perspective on what drives us to edit or suppress our public utterances, which he explores in Self-Censorship – an updated version of his 1994 essay about political correctness.

“The pressures to conform to ‘acceptable opinion’ about the Israel-Palestine conflict made the arguments of the book relevant again in a way that I would not have anticipated,” he says.

Loury is not speaking theoretically: although he maintains that Israel has a right to defend itself, he began harbouring doubts about what he believes to be “the unjustified collective punishment that was being visited upon the innocent civilians of Gaza”. Fearful of losing professional opportunities, he kept quiet until the topic came up during a podcast discussion with colleague Omer Bartov. Earlier this year, Loury was fired by conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute, which justified its decision on the grounds of “a lack of shared priorities”.

Does he find it ironic that an organisation that so publicly espouses the value of free speech gave such an evasive reason for his dismissal?

“Yes,” he replies. “And I don’t think I can improve on that.”

‘University is meant to be disquieting and uncomfortable and unsettling.’

But as Loury explains in Self-Censorship, there is no such thing as truly unfettered speech because nobody can be assured of expressing themselves without consequence.

“There ought to be social sanctions for, say, compulsive liars,” he writes. “However, when a society shows a low degree of tolerance for speech about matters of political importance, self-censorship proliferates and public discourse and policy suffer.”

Universities that prioritise their student’s “cultural safety” and “emotional wellbeing”, he argues, are part of the problem.

“A university is not just a forum for discussion, but intellectual growth,” he says. “It’s meant to be disquieting and uncomfortable and unsettling. You come in thinking one thing, then someone presents a contrary argument, and you’re challenged to defend what you think. In doing so, you become wiser and more adept at political deliberation. That’s certainly the way I try to conduct my own classrooms.”

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At Brown University, where Loury has taught since 2005, he encourages debate about topics that many of his peers would be afraid to touch.

“George Floyd, a black man, was killed by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, in 2020 – and the country understands that to be an expression of white supremacy and structural racism,” he says. “But how do we know that the motives of the people involved had anything to do with race? What would be the evidence we need in order to draw that conclusion?”

The mere fact that Loury raises such questions will be taken by his critics as proof of sinister intent. Some may choose to smear his character or sow doubt about his motives – in other words, with an ad hominem attack. They may be surprised to hear Loury state that although such accusations are often fallacious, they’re not always without value.

“When you express yourself in public, people are making a judgment not just about the content of your argument, but about your character,” he says. “The speaker has to be mindful of the possibility they’ll be misinterpreted. Yet, some people really do believe that blacks are genetically inferior, and that’s why they’re underrepresented in elite colleges. The person who thinks this horrible thought is more willing to take the risk of speaking recklessly, so it ends up having a self-confirming quality to it.”

But when those with moderate views choose not to ask uncomfortable questions, lest they be accused of bigotry, the most extreme voices end up dominating. This creates echo chambers, often to the detriment of activists who lose touch with broader public opinion.

Consider the issue of transgender rights. According to the Pew Research Center, only 26 per cent of Americans believe healthcare professionals should be permitted to provide cross-sex hormones or transition surgery to minors (down from 31 per cent in 2022), while 15 per cent support trans athletes competing on teams that match their gender identity rather than their biological sex (compared to 17 per cent in 2022). In the UK, a recent YouGov poll revealed that a mere 3 per cent believe children under 16 should have access to gender reassignment surgery, while 12 per cent are supportive of biological males competing in women’s sport.

Self-Censorship by Glenn Loury.Credit: Polity

“No one wants to be thought of as being on the wrong side of certain sensitive issues, which creates social pressures to conform,” Loury says. “But as views begin to evolve, and the enthusiasm with which people embraced a cause begins to wane, it creates an unravelling dynamic in which the previous consensus gets overtaken.”

Shortly after the 2024 US presidential election, Loury declared that he was happy Trump won – even though he didn’t vote for him.

In a Substack essay, Loury explained: “I felt disdain toward the Democrats’ blithe insistence that nothing is really wrong; that the status quo is more or less okay; that we can continue funding and fighting endless foreign wars; continue placating the working class while handing over policy to over-educated professional elites; and continue intimating that anyone who criticises them must be racist or homophobic or transphobic or fascist.”

It’s this willingness to question the status quo that has impressed former ABC Radio Sydney presenter Josh Szeps, who now hosts the popular Uncomfortable Conversations podcast.

“Glenn is one of America’s wisest, most intriguing, defiant intellectuals,” Szeps says. “He’s always open to persuasion, but never to being bullied, shamed or coerced. He’s a ferociously independent thinker.”

Self-Censorship by Glenn Loury is published by Polity at $24.95.