The Glenn Show – Details, episodes & analysis

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com. Pre-order Glenn's forthcoming book, SELF-CENSORSHIP: https://www.amazon.com/Self-Censorship-Glenn-C-Loury/dp/1509567402/ref=sr_1_1?crid=223KUFY8BN0X&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ar6rmRPzp7pEiJss0o1eUeLbLwOgX_qrXHtWjMS3_m_GjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.goECGgv0OxAPgLR8kNnsISu5AK6OSVoa5qWVmqRNqwY&dib_tag=se&keywords=self-censorship+glenn+c.+loury&qid=1746808862&sprefix=self-censor%2Caps%2C237&sr=8-1

Video Links

0:43 Ross: Trump's economic policies are the worst I've seen in my life

7:36 Glenn's new book, SELF-CENSORSHIP

12:00 Trump’s bid to become the most powerful person in the history of the world

21:17 The disruptive effects of tariffs, financial regulatory manipulation, and extraordinary debt levels

27:58 Ross: Alienating our allies is only going to strengthen China

33:41 Glenn: Those who lost out to globalization are getting their way

41:04 Will Trump heed economic warning signs?

48:10 Can Congress constrain Trump?

Recorded April 19, 2025

Links and Readings

Edward Luce’s Financial Times piece, “Trump, Truss, and the ‘Moron Premium’”

Larry Kotlikoff’s Substack

Larry Kotlikoff’s post, “30-Year TIPS Are Looking Mighty Attractive”

Glenn’s most recent conversation with Larry Kotlikoff

Michael Sandel’s book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

Video Links

0:00 Intro

00:31 Prefatory remarks

4:15 Glenn: The Trump administration’s defunding of the universities is mischievous in the extreme

9:06 Ground News ad

11:01 Doesn’t maintaining the preeminence of American universities require diversity of thought?

18:47 John McWhorter has entered the building

20:25 How did higher ed lose the general public’s support?

23:05 The university’s role in public discourse

26:26 Was affirmative action a success or a failure?

31:36 The partisan balance in education funding

42:21 The costs and benefits of tenure

50:09 Can education preserve democracy if students aren’t doing the reading?

1:01:59 Are we irrevocably polarized as a nation?

1:07:28 Q&A: You don’t seem as excited by Trump as you once were. What is disappointing you?

1:11:40 Q&A: If higher ed serves society, why do so many elite grads use their degrees to get rich?

1:16:01 Q&A: How do you teach diversity to students who’ve never spent time around people different from them?

1:19:15 Q&A: What’s the difference between contrarianism and provocation?

1:21:23 Q&A: Should fewer people go to college?

Recorded April 22, 2025

Links and Readings

Michael Sandel’s book, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?

John Stuart Mill’s book, On Liberty

John Milton’a Areopagitica

Alan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students

John’s new book, Pronoun Trouble: The Story of Us in Seven Little Words

Glenn’s memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

The Great Courses

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolsty’s novel, War and Peace

Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina

Plato’s dialogue, The Republic

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

I spent part of last week visiting Stanford University, and John is off taking care of business in Australia. The time difference, travel, and speaking obligations made scheduling a recording impossible. So this week, I’ve got something a little different for you. Instead of recording a conversation on the day’s news with John, I decided to record one on my own. In this episode, I talk through some opinion pieces that grabbed my attention and give my take on the topics. I address Trump and the economy, Trump’s predictability and unpredictability, DOGE and MAGA’s slashing of the federal government, Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest, antisemitism, and attacks on Tesla cars, dealerships, and charging stations. This is a bit of an experiment—my team and I wanted to see what would happen if I gave it a shot. Let me know how it’s working for you in the comments.

These pieces are all quite relevant as of this posting, on Monday afternoon. But by Friday? Who knows. So I decided to release this episode simultaneously to both free and full subscribers. If you like getting The Glenn Show a few days early, consider becoming a full subscriber. You’ll get new episodes early, plus access to monthly Q&As with John McWhorter, bonus episodes, and other exclusive content.

Become a full subscriber at https://glennloury.substack.com

Video Links

2:31 The opportunities and risks of Trump's economic plans

6:50 Is Trump as unpredictable as he seems?

16:00 DOGE and MAGA take a chainsaw to the federal government

22:30 An argument against Mahmoud Khalil's detention ...

32:49 ... and one in favor of Khalil's detention

41:38 Is it time for an official ban on antisemitism?

49:14 Teslas are burning

Recorded March 14, 2025

Links and Readings

Steve Cortes’s RCP piece, “Trump and the Economy: Opportunities and Risks”

Susan Glasser’s New Yorker piece, “Uncertainty Is Trump’s Brand. But What if He Already Told Us What He’s Going to Do?”

Tim Murtaugh’s Washington Times piece, “Why the Democrat Brand Is in the Toilet”

Jeff Mayhugh’s Hill piece, “The MAGA Revolution Is Playing with Fire”

Ross Barkan’s NYMag piece, “Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Will Backfire on Trump”

Josh Hammer’s Daily Signal piece, “Mahmoud Khalil and the Red-Green Assault on American Sovereignty”

Mackenzie France’s RCP piece, “Congress Should Pass Antisemitism Awareness Act”

Rich Lowry’s New York Post piece, “Tesla Terrorism Only Reveals the Left’s Impotence”

PREORDER Glenn's memoir, LATE ADMISSIONS: CONFESSIONS OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393881349

0:00 The conversations that aren’t happening on college campuses

4:16 Staying informed about Israel-Palestine

9:22 Glenn: Don’t subject me to a loyalty test

12:14 Rajiv: High-minded principles alone won’t solve the self-censorship problem

18:11 “The Naked Emperor Equilibrium”

21:52 The game theoretical aspect of Glenn’s memoir

25:35 An homage to Thomas Schelling

27:31 Rajiv’s work on police use-of-force, then and now

30:36 The predictive value of political betting markets

42:44 Robert Solow’s intellectual family tree

46:16 The lopsided distribution of elite economists

49:08 Rajiv: Big econ departments should take more chances on candidates

51:52 The mind-boggling geographical variation in police killings

56:09 Why Rajiv doesn’t take pride in other Indian-Americans’ success

Recorded January 26, 2024

Links and Readings

Noam Dworman’s TGS appearance

Noam Dworman’s podcast, Live from the Table

Norman Finkelstein and Eli Lake on Live from the Table

Benny Morris’s book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Crisis

Rashid Khalidi on Live from the Table

Benny Morris on Live from the Table

Tara Henley’s Lean Out

Ilan Pappé’s book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Glenn’s essay, “Self-Censorship in Public Discourse: A Theory of ‘Political Correctness’ and Related Phenomena

Glenn’s conversation with Omer Bartov

Glenn’s conversation with Norman Finkelstein

Norman Finkelstein’s book, I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It!: Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom

Glenn’s conversation with John Mearsheimer

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Committee Report

University of Chicago’s 2014 “Chicago Principles” on freedom of expression

Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann’s book, The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion—Our Second Skin

Timothy Kuran’s book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification

Thomas Schelling’s book, The Strategy of Conflict

Rajiv and Brendan O’Flahery’s book, Shadows of Doubt: Stereotypes, Crime, and Pursuit of Justice

Gunnar Myrdal’s book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy

Rajiv’s Substack, Imperfect Information

Rajiv’s Substack post, “Economic Growth and the Growth of Economics: Reflections on Robert Solow”

Ralph Ellison’s essay 1970 essay, “What America Would Be Like without Blacks”

PREORDER Glenn's memoir, LATE ADMISSIONS: CONFESSIONS OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393881349

0:00 Why Noam gave Glenn a bag of books about Israel

5:25 Why Glenn felt burned after The Bell Curve

8:49 Loyalty among friends during the Gaza War

13:15 The blowback from Brown’s ceasefire letter

17:18 Talking about Israel across the ideological spectrum

19:42 Glenn: Loyalty tests are unreasonable

23:16 Trying to understand the human costs of war

26:26 Glenn: There is no decent alternative to a two-state solution

33:32 “Apartheid,” “genocide,” and other potentially unhelpful terms

39:29 Noam: Thank God for President Biden

44:13 Why Noam is worried about American attitudes toward Israel

49:08 Will the Gaza War end up strengthening Hamas?

56:08 The tone-deafness of some supporters of Israel

Recorded January 31, 2023

Links and Readings

Noam’s podcast, Live from the Table

The Glenn Show Live at the Comedy Cellar

Glenn and John Live at the Comedy Cellar

Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

Glenn’s conversation with Charles Murray

The Brown University faculty’s ceasefire letter

Glenn’s conversation with Omer Bartov

Glenn’s conversation with Norman Finkelstein

Glenn’s conversation with John Mearsheimer

Glenn’s most recent conversation with Robert Wright

Benny Morris’s book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict

Aaron Maté’s appearance on Noam’s podcast

PREORDER Glenn's memoir, LATE ADMISSIONS: CONFESSIONS OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393881349

0:00 John: Claudine Gay needed to resign, but her plagiarism wasn’t a mortal sin

6:50 Has DEI taken a hit after the Gay controversy?

13:50 When “DEI” really means “racial preferences”

22:12 The case of Neri Oxman

23:52 John: Bill Ackman looks “absurd”

26:47 Three cheers for John’s dinosaurs

28:22 Is Glenn really a “black conservative”?

31:11 The three dimensions of black conservatism

37:50 Black elites and immigration

42:35 Ibram X. Kendi undeterred

44:48 Roland Fryer is still standing

46:48 Is Amy Wax getting railroaded by Penn?

Recorded January 27, 2024

Links and Readings

John’s NYT piece, “We Need a New Word for ‘Plagiarism’”

Elon Musk’s DEI airline post on X

Neri Oxman’s CV

Adolph Reed’s essay, “‘What Are the Drums Saying, Booker?’: The Curious Role of the Black Public Intellectual” (originally published in the Village Voice, April 11, 1995)

Wilfred Reilly’s comparative IQ post on X

Recording of Amy Wax’s FIRE webinar

Glenn’s December 2021 episode with Amy Wax

Glenn’s August 2022 episode with Amy Wax

Charles Murray’s book, Human Diversity: The Biology of Race, Gender, and Class

Glenn’s conversation with Charles Murray

Preorder Glenn's memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393881349

0:00 The many, many books of David Kaiser

3:01 David: Claudine Gay is a symptom, not a cause, of what’s wrong at Harvard

6:09 Western Civilization and elitism at Harvard

10:03 Meritorious elitism and luxury elitism

12:35 Intellectuals in the wild

14:28 How James Bryant Conant built the modern Harvard …

17:33 … and how it was broken

18:52 Glenn’s previous conversation with Omer Bartov

24:12 Why David thinks the Gaza War falls short of genocide but maybe not ethnic cleansing

25:51 What Claudine Gay could (and maybe should) have said at her congressional hearing

27:51 Why David thinks originalists will have a problem rejecting attempts to remove Trump from electoral ballots

32:38 David: Mitch McConnell should have impeached Trump when he had the chance

36:07 David’s new book, States of the Union

41:03 Have state of the union addresses always been as boring as they are now?

44:55 Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and their legacies

57:37 Why Obama didn’t propose a New New Deal after the 2008 financial crisis

1:01:01 Biden’s silence

Recorded January 10, 2024

Links and Readings

David’s book, Economic Diplomacy and the Origin of the Second World War: Germany, Britain, France, and Eastern Europe, 1930-1939

David’s book, Politics and War: European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler

David’s book, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War

David’s book, The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

David’s book, Baseball Greatness: Top Players and Teams According to Wins Above Average, 1901-2017

David’s book, NFL 1965: The Most Exciting Season

David’s book, A Life in History

David’s book, States of the Union: A History of the United States through Presidential Addresses, 1789-2023

Glenn’s previous conversation with David

Fareed Zakaria on elite universities

Glenn’s conversation with Omer Bartov

David’s blog, History Unfolding

David’s blog post about the Fourteenth Amendment

Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States

John F. Kennedy’s June 11, 1963 address on segregation

Preorder Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative wherever you buy your books.

If you missed Wednesday’s City Journal and Manhattan Institute-hosted livestream, I’ve got you covered. Today I’m releasing the recording of that livestream as a special bonus episode. This event marked the publication of my City Journal essay “Clarence Thomas and Me,” and I had a stellar line-up alongside me to discuss the essay and the work of Clarence Thomas: Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute, Robert George of Princeton, and Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School.

0:00 Introductions

2:58 Why Glenn wrote “Clarence Thomas and Me”

5:27 Randall: “Justice Thomas trades on his blackness”

10:58 Glenn: Clarence Thomas has not “betrayed black people”

12:30 Thomas’s engagement with natural law jurisprudence

19:29 How would Thomas have come down on Brown v. Board of Education?

20:55 The loyalty trap

24:20 Randall: Thomas’s originalism may also commit him to sanctioning segregation

28:24 Robbie: There are originalist interpretations that support Brown v. Board of Education

34:07 Thomas’s race cases

36:03 Glenn: Thomas can act as both a principled jurist and as an advocate for the rights of African Americans

40:56 Randall: In 100 years, people will regard Shelby County v. Holder as one of the worst decisions in the Court’s history

44:36 Maintaining integrity under pressure

51:22 What are the differences between Thomas’s, Scalia’s, and Alito’s originalisms?

55:30 Will Thomas have broader popularity in the future?

1:01:10 Is racial solidarity inconsistent with judicial impartiality?

1:03:30 Closing remarks

Recorded January 17, 2024

Links and Readings

Glenn’s City Journal essay, “Clarence Thomas and Me”

Glenn’s book, One by One from the Inside Out : Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America

Michael McConnell’s article, “The Originalist Case for Brown v. Board of Education”

Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick’s book, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit

Lon Fuller’s book, The Morality of Law

The documentary on Clarence Thomas, Created Equal

0:00 Preorder Glenn’s forthcoming memoir, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

2:17 Why Glenn wrote a memoir (and why you should order it now)

8:59 A ringing endorsement from John

10:00 What does Martin Luther King Jr. Day mean in 2024?

15:28 Preserving King’s belief in “the content of our character”

16:20 What would King have thought of Claudine Gay?

20:20 King’s radicalism

25:54 John: Being against DEI does not make you a racist

28:10 The Tabia Lee affair at D’Anza Community College

29:58 How Claudine Gay should have reacted to the plagiarism scandal

32:47 Glenn: “The DEI movement is hoist on its own petard”

35:57 How DEI’s dominance has improved John’s home media set-up

41:41 John’s upcoming cabaret show

Links and Readings

John’s NYT piece, “Claudine Gay Was Not Driven Out Because She Is Black”

Glenn’s conversation with Tabia Lee

“All’s Fair in Love and War” from Gold Diggers of 1937

0:00 The long road leading to the Gaza War

9:14 Don’t Palestinians have some responsibility for the current state of affairs?

9:48 The precedent of the 1973 Yom Kippur War

11:26 Omer: Israel only negotiates under pressure

13:31 Netanyahu and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

15:27 The US’s military support for Israel

16:32 The origins of Hamas

20:20 Omer: Netanyahu’s coalition is “a mirror image of Hamas”

24:45 The threat to democracy in Israel

26:27 Omer: Netanyahu is driving the country to the right in order to avoid a corruption trial

30:07 How “Jewish supremacists” have gained control of Israel’s government

34:01 Why Omer’s Zionism does not commit him to defending Israel’s actions

36:46 The risk of genocide in Gaza

40:05 The IDF’s procedure in the Gaza invasion

43:09 What will happen to the Gazan refugees?

45:00 The international community’s role in finding a resolution to the Gaza War

48:17 Is the IDF “the most moral army in the world”?

54:39 The revenge motive

57:07 Omer: The campaign in Gaza is a fiasco

59:38 A US-led plan for “the day after”

1:04:37 Is peace in Israel a pollyannaish pipe dream?

Recorded January 2, 2023

Links and Readings

Benny Morris’s book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Omer’s New Statesman piece, “Both Netanyahu and Hamas see this crisis as an opportunity”

Hamas’s 1988 charter

Omer’s NYT op-ed, “What I Believe as a Historian of Genocide”