Glenn Loury
speaker
197 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Glenn Loury’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, you know, and a lot of Israelis agree with me. For sure.
Yeah. I mean, Omer, of course, but, um, many.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, well, he's not very prominent.
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.
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?
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.
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.
No, it was a two paragraph email.
I haven't talked to him since.
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 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.
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.
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.
Showing 141–160 of 197 · page 8 of 10
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