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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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 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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
Not to exaggerate my own importance, yes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
Well, some people have done it. Nobody at the Manhattan Institute.
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.
I do seem to have noticed that, yeah.
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.
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