The Ricochet Podcast - The Authentic Ethos with Glenn Loury

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

The tippi-toppers of higher ed are out of breath—they've run themselves into nonsensicle circles. But today's guest Glenn Loury is breathing easy. He, Peter and Rob discuss the Ivy League, Claudine Gay and the advancement of Black Americans, both due to and in lieu of Affirmative Action. Stay tuned to the end for Rob Long's 100% guranteed, "Impress Anybody on Planet Earth: Extra Special Eggnog" recipe.Soundbite from the open: ‘Claudine Gay needs to step down,’ Dr. Carol Swain tells Fox News Digital

Habba, habba, habba, habba, habba. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It is the Ricochet Podcast. I'm Rob Long. Joining me today is Peter Robinson. James Lilacs is traveling. Our guest today is Glenn Lowry.

We talk about everything, including the spirit of Christmas. Stay tuned. The right thing for her to do is to step down. And I hope that the pressure doesn't relent until she does that because she's harming academia. She's harming black people she's harming everyone who had to work and earn their way uh in academia this is the ricochet podcast this is number 670 i'm rob long one of the co-founders of ricochet along with my fellow founder peter robinson in palo alto peter how are you i am well rob, Rob. I think. How many? What is this?

This is number what? 670. This is just unbelievable. I remember number two so well. So we are not joined as usual by James Lilacs. He is not here. He's traveling today. So this is just what we call in theater, we call this a two-hander. He's not here. He's traveling today. So this is just what we call in theater, we call this a two-hander. It's like the Driving Miss Daisy. That's what this is. It's the gin game. One of those.

Just two characters on stage in a long one act. Or as a Broadway producer told me... Who's Morgan Freeman and who's Jessica Tandy? Well, i think that that that we'll leave that to the audience to decide but i um was going to say that a broadway producer said to me years ago he said uh listen here's what we need 90 minutes no intermission and i said um okay well like a comedy no you're not listening to me. 90 minutes, no intermission.

Like, that's the most important thing if you're a theater producer, is people come in, they sit down, no intermission, see the play, and they go out and have dinner. If it's too late, there's intermission,

you lose people. So, you know, that's what we're going to do today. 90 minutes, no intermission. Not 90. Merry Christmas, no intermission. Not 90. Merry Christmas, Peter. Peter Robinson Merry Christmas, Rob. It has been a long time since I was in New York at Christmastime, but I used to love it for all the, I think,

all the right reasons, all the childlike reasons. The decorations would go up the the the the the big public decorations at rockefeller center the surprising number to me it was always surprising how how seriously the people on the upper east side which is where i lived for one year took decorating their front doors with wreaths and red ribbons and so forth yeah and then of course the shopping the the window displays is it still like that it is you know it's still like that still crowded it's still got like people coming in on the weekends and walking around which is kind of like you know there's a part of the fun of being in new york or saying oh it's people get out of my way but in fact they are the um the all the fuel that keeps the engine running we should be a little nicer those people

uh decorations everywhere i mean i think um you know my neighborhood people have their you know wreaths out i have my wreaths out and they have their you know their stoops festooned with furs with the you know uh evergreen stuff so it does feel like there's moments where you you know you look away from some of the other things and you just focus on the Christmas stuff. And what about, what do people say to each other? Is Merry Christmas still permitted or is it Happy Holidays? Yeah.

Well, I think it's a problem with Merry Christmas now is that the people who say it tend to say it and like they're mad about it. Like Merry Christmas, right? I can say that, right? And it's like, well, yeah, but, you you know maybe different attitude when you say it um almost everybody i mean i don't know i've seen somebody says people say merry christmas and i don't i mean i i suspect there was a time when um that was controversial although i think now it's been pretty much debunked but you're now you know you're supposed to say merry christmas although you know last

week i said happy hanukkah to people I knew who celebrated because it was the first day of Hanukkah I used to love that about New York that the population the Jewish population of New York was about 3 million the biggest Jewish population of any city in the world including Tel Aviv and

it was you'd say Happy Hanukkah if you knew someone was Jewish but it was just a kind of act of generosity on everybody's part. Atheists, Christians, Jews alike used to feel perfectly comfortable, well, at least being greeted by Merry Christmas. Okay, now it's Advent. And I feel that I must do my duty and examine, it is up to me to examine your conscience. How seriously, I am aware, Rob, we have exchanged emails in conversation, the outside conversation. I am aware that you are, I was about to say,

returning to the roots of Episcopalianism, but to a Catholic. That's a preposterous formulation. Yeah, exactly. What are you doing for Advent? I know you have, as I seem to recall, you have a faith church that's uptownosterous formulation but yeah exactly have you what are you doing for advent i know you have as i seem to recall you have a church that's uptown or at midtown yes well i mean advent the problem with advent is that it's um i live uh i live in between two churches here there's a presbyterian church that i can see from my window and then there's an episcopal church that i can see like from the skylight here which means that

um at various times at noon uh during advent um the bells play uh oh come oh come emmanuel right which is really the only advent carol that you're allowed to sing you're not allowed to play any christmas carols even though that's what everybody wants to sing, you know, come all ye faithful, things like that. But you're not allowed to do that if you're serious about it. So Advent is a pain in the neck, frankly. I think that we should just be singing Christmas carols. So the Episcopalians have this thing where they go,

we'll have lessons and carols. We'll have a special service where you can come and get your Christmas carols out before the 25th. And so there will be that, caroling on the steps of the church next week and then i am um i think i'm ushering uh on christmas eve in the city you're staying in the city in the city staying in the city so i think i'll be at usher uh um which i think i don't i'm i'm always confused as to what they actually do you stand there

and then you sort of let the rows get in line for the Eucharist so I think that's what we do well Merry Christmas as things emerge we want to talk at some point I believe you are I believe it was not idle conversation

although we both had a drink you're planning to apply to Yale Divinity School is this correct? I believe you are, I believe it was not idle conversation, although we had both had a drink. You're planning to apply to Yale Divinity School. Is this correct? I'm thinking about it. It's one of these things I'm thinking about doing. You know, it's time for the third act to begin. I mean, what I hope is five acts, obviously. I'm hoping for the full Shakespeare, not for the, you know, 90-minute no intermission life.

I'm looking for something different, something a little, you know. Some people do move to Florida. I'm not planning to move to florida i'm not crazy about uh well i mean i love florida florida's great but i don't i'm not ready for that i'm not ready for the um the endless endless sunshine i need a little sleep. Speaking of endless sunshine, we are joined by Glenn Lowry. Glenn is a professor of economics at Brown University. He's host of The Glenn Show, which you can find right here on the Ricochet Network or at glennlowry.substack.com. We'll give you all that in the show notes. Glenn has been here before. I have seen him on stage he does this

incredibly long loopy terrific funny thought-provoking show on stage here in new york about you know i guess it says a good a good wasp i'll put it this way about a about a about a five iron from my apartment um and uh he is here to talk about everything including christmas but especially about hey how how bad is it for the ivy league institutions as of friday december 5th 2023 glenn thanks for joining us again thanks rob that was quite an intro. I appreciate it. Hey there, Peter. Glenn, how are you, man? I'm doing well. Doing well, thank you.

Glenn, I want to get to this in a moment. We have to talk about Claudine Gay. We have to talk about Mother Harvard because we just have to. But I'm going to put down a marker that I want to return to in the conversation, and the marker is this. Some of the Ivies are coming out of this looking okay. I would argue that my alma mater is doing fine, but one that is doing, my impression is it's doing really pretty well, is Brown University. And I am convinced, you can talk me out of this if you want to,

but I am convinced that the presence of Glenn Lowry, who is rigorous, who will call out nonsense, the presence of Glenn Lowry at Brown University, I'm sure it has enriched Brown students in all kinds of ways. But I also have the feeling that your mere presence stops a great deal of nonsense before it even gets started. You flatter me with that I had such power. But I will tell you this. I have a student. Her name is Maya Rakoff. She's Jewish, as it happens, and she's my intern for the podcast, The Glenn Show. She had a one-on-one meeting with President Christina Paxson as a student representative of the Jewish community with whom Paxson wanted to have, you know, good offices and an open door. And she reports that my president, Christina Paxson, who happens to be an economist and is a formal member of my department,

had nothing but good things to say about glenn lowry even just slipping you're slipping no well well no uh i tore into her back in uh 2020 during the george floyd thing when she issued one of these dear colleague letters that was basically, you know, a Black Lives Matter propaganda piece. And I said, no, this is not what a university should be. I'm sure it cost her no end of trouble because it got quite a bit of attention, my criticism. But I think, you know, I think she hurt me a little bit. And my report that I'm just giving you now for my student, I think, confirms that. So, you know, it's not all dark and grim here. Maybe Ivy League college presidents can learn a thing or two from some of their obstreperous faculty members like me. So, Glenn, can I ask you a question if you're claudine gay and you're asked or any of those university professor

for university presidents and now former university professor for presidents if you were asked that question at the um house uh committee meeting if you felt that statements that were made you know the shouting river to see those things calling for genocide things, calling for genocide and the end to the state of Israel was violence, if you thought that violated university speech codes, how could you possibly have answered that question, yes? Because that would mean that you would have to discipline all those students. Isn't that, I mean, isn't, I mean, I'm not trying to like gin up some sympathy for people who probably don't deserve it. But I don't know. I've been thinking about past couple of weeks. Like, what are they supposed to say? Because the next question would be like, OK, well, how many of those students are going to be suspended or expelled?

Yeah, I see that. And I'm not a lawyer. I'm not sure I've got under my fingers every legal nicety that applies here. It doesn't look like a hard question to me, though. It looks like what you do is you distinguish between, you know, our bylaws may say the following with respect to speech, but such an act is a, you know, vicious and malicious and unacceptable way of behaving in our community. Just as if someone were to say, I think it's time for black people to go back in chains. And, you know, presumably that's protected speech, technically speaking. Right. If you're not inciting and you're not directly threatening, presumably a person can under the rules, quote, depending on the context, close quote, say that. But no university president would hesitate in responding to such a hypothetical with that's an abhorrent way of talking in our community. It would not be tolerated. We would discourage it in the most strenuous terms and whatever legal remedies were available to us,

we would avail ourselves of them. That brackets the question of whether or not technically speaking it's actually a violation of university rules, but makes clear where the values are that the person who runs the institution is standing for. So I think they, by repairing to a legalistic posture, dug a hole for themselves uh up there in front of congress that's what it seemed like to me and also i guess i'm looking for some good news here and and i i don't think this is good news i'm gonna throw it at you see what you think for the past i don't know five years six years maybe longer than that we've been told that speech is violence words are violence yeah what you say you

can be uh you could be severely punished for what you say the former president of harvard was fired for saying that some innate sex differences may uh may be the cause of some perceived differences in certain performance categories between men and women and he was he was tossed out on his ear um now two weeks ago we hear from the from the uh grandees at these institutions that no actually it's very complicated and the context is important and there's sort of this anguished splitting of hairs and trying to sort out the truth. Have we seen the end now to kind of crazy crackpot speech codes and wokeism gone amok, or are they just taking a breather? Is this halftime? Is this a timeout for them to huddle and drink some Gatorade and come back on the field and try again?

I think things have changed. I said this to Christina Paxson here at Brown. I said, if you hadn't come out with a letter declaring the values of the university to be aligned with Black Lives Matter in 2020, you might not be under pressure to come out with a letter declaring your position on on gaza and you know the chicago principles the calvin report and all of that universities are not supposed to be waving political banners they're supposed to be seeking the truth and and you know holding up a higher a higher standard of intellectual property and seriousness. So in a way, you've kind of dug yourself a hole here. I mean, that thing that happened to Larry Summers was outrageous.

You were referencing that the former president of Harvard University was forced out. He lost the support of the faculty. There was a vote of no confidence. The trustees decided to not stand with him and and he graciously stepped aside but all he said was the uh really not controversial observation that men and women as populations differ with respect to certain traits that might bear on the frequency with which women end up getting appointed professors of physics or mathematics or biochemistry at the university. I mean, it could be right, it could be wrong, but it was certainly not vicious, malicious, or whatever. It was an arguable claim. And he said it regretfully. He said, we need to do something about this.

Indeed. That was the context. All right. So, but I would tell you I'm not for forcing university presidents out based upon the extent to which a comment that they might have made could have landed the wrong way with this or that group that that that doesn't doesn't make me feel all that good to to see it happening no matter who it's happening to but again the ironies are just exquisite the university of pennsy Pennsylvania is trying to fire Amy Wax for having an opinion. Yes. Yes. And expressing it. And there's really no question about whether or not her her academic freedom and free speech rights are sufficient to inoculate her against such an attack and yet they are preceded with a formal uh uh you know uh process that could theoretically result in in them revoking her tenure uh and uh you know they in a way are digging their own digging their own graves with that kind of behavior it seems to me how much

trouble are they in do you think glenn i mean how much the, these are the, some of the most out, I mean, the most long-lived prestige brands in American culture. I mean, worldwide, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown. I mean, these are big deals. These are big names. People come from all over the world to come here. And it's hard to read the news and not think, oh man, we got to start again. We got to just stop it with this and build some new Harvards and some new Yales and some new everything else.

We can't, we can't keep how much trouble are they in? Are they going to be able, do you think having been an observer of these people for a long time, we could be able to fix this or paper it over or, or the American elite's just too lazy. And they're like, well,

you know what? I'm going to spend 60 grand to send my kid to this stupid school. And he's not going to learn a damn thing. But it'll help him in life. I think they're going to try to ride it out. I think they dug in very deep. Yeah. You know, I think this DEI stuff, which is now getting a lot of critical review because a lot of the DEI and ethnic

studies and post-colonial studies types and whatnot are the places from which some of the offensive statements and so forth are coming. They still have the upper hand. And when I see a board of trustees, or governors as they call them at Harvard, overseers, actually step up, you know, maybe I'll see a different, maybe I'll be singing a different tune. But I think they're dug in. I think they're just going to try to write it out. They're just going to try to, you know, make cosmetic adjustments and hope that this blows over. Well, let's not forget that they are in charge of vast sums of money. It's not as if

they really need to go around rattling their tin cups even to very rich donors such as Bill Ackman at Harvard. He pledged $ 100 million. I don't remember the details, but when you're sitting on top of an endowment of $50 billion, as Harvard is, much smaller at Brown and Dartmouth, but still in the billions, you can hunker down and wait for a lot to pass. So, Glenn, on Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, you put up a tweet. I'm going to paraphrase it, correct me if I get it wrong. This is, I think it was two days ago, that the main charge against her was that she was insufficiently anti-Semitic, but that was the wrong charge. The real charge against her should be that she's a mediocre scholar.

Have I paraphrased you correctly? Yeah, that's accurate. I said intellectual bankrupt, but well, okay. So there are these plagiarism charges floating around now. Christopher Rufo at the City Journal has been making a big deal out of this. I have no information about that other than what, you know, I've read in the newspaper. I saw a reference to certain sentences extracted from some of her published work that bore a striking resemblance to sentences that someone else had written. And again, the ironies are just exquisite. She's accused of plagiarizing

Carol Swain. I don't know if anyone knows who Carolol swain is but she is a fervent christian blacks for trump political scientist who had tenure at princeton and moved to vanderbilt and it could go a long story about carol swain but i want you to know she's conservative she's a conservative black woman right who has written about voting rights uh in the spirit of saying basically i don't think you have to match the color of the congress rights in the spirit of saying, basically, I don't think you have to match the color of the congressperson with the color of the constituent in order for Black people to have representation in the Congress. This is Carol's thesis that goes back 30 years, and she makes a strong argument to that. I mean, she couldn't possibly be further away politically

than Claudine Gay, and Claudine is accused of having plagiarized her. I looked at these examples, and she should have, Claudine Gay, given citations to Carol Swain when she paraphrased sentences from Swain's work by way of summarizing the state of the literature, because Gay writes also won race and political representation but i the plagiarism such as it is such as i understand the case to this point isn't nearly as serious as the fact that the wellness vita is paper thin i mean i think she's got a half dozen articles there's no book there there's no body of work it's published she's got 11 articles i can remember when she was first being considered for an appointment there was a lot of chatter on twitter because she had been out at stanford and she got tenure there and people were saying how did she ever get tenure there wasn't one scholar i can't uh quote the name i just don't remember uh prominent in the field said if we uh don't deny her tenure when will we

ever deny anybody tenure the record was just that then thin, and yet she got it. And the next thing you know, she's coming back to Harvard as a full professor in the government department there. And the next thing you know, at a relatively young age, she's dean of the faculty. I mean, I knew Henry Wysoski personally. Henry Wysoski was a very heavyweight economic historian, grizzled old dean of the faculty back in the you know he was you know he's a white guy but he was a heavyweight i know larry summits he summits is a heavyweight yeah intellectual he's he's a very serious economist one of the top 100 150 economists of his generation he's a very serious player in his field claudian gay as a scholar with respect was a lightweight so if if she had a record like

larry summers had of contributing to her field this little peccadillo of not having put a footnote in because she paraphrased somebody's sentence would roll off of her, like, water off of a duck's back. But she's weak on the chops, on the issue of academic chops, and that makes her vulnerable, it seems to me, to this kind of attack. Darrell Bock Glenn, I'm going to ask questions now that are true. I feel that I have a couple of questions that I'm going to ask because we're friends, but for a white guy to ask these questions, I also feel it might be a little rough. So, you just reach across Zoom and slap me if I need it.

Or I absolve you of your sins, even now. Don't do that yet. Don't give it away now. Okay, well, let me wait and see how bad it is yeah i was gonna say what's that you know okay so here's the question isn't making claudine gay who is a second rate academic isn't making her president of harvard simply of Harvard simply the logical outcome of affirmative action. That is to say, we make allowances for favored groups to get into Harvard. We make allowances in giving them tenure. And yep, it's about time to lower our standards to permit a member of a favored group to become president of the oldest institution in America?

Doesn't it all just sort of line up and flow from, once you're committed to affirmative action, sooner or later, you'll end up with a second-rate president of Harvard? Well, there's nothing offensive about what you say. Ah, thank you. It is, it is. I mean, I could amend it, The affirmative action plus the Peter principle, you know, and you get what you get. Here's the counter argument. Someone's going to say, well, scholar is one thing. Administrator is another. They're going to say Larry Bacow, who was president

of Harvard before Claudian Gay. I don't know what kind of scholar he was, but he's not up for a Nobel Prize. They're going to say Drew Faust, who was president of Harvard before Bacow was president of Harvard and was a literary scholar, if I recall correctly. And with respect, I'm not going to say she was a bad one, but I mean, she also wasn't a Nobel laureate or whatever the equivalent of that would be in literary criticism. They're going to say Claudine Gay was an adequate or more than adequate dean of the faculty, you know, this is not my argument, but this is the argument that they would make, and so, you know, it's apples and oranges. You're asking her to be something, that's not what we, we didn't hire a scholar, we hired an academic administrator, and besides, she's the first Black woman, here comes your affirmative action, to head this great and

venerable institution, and we're in the 21st century, Peter, not the 20th century, etc. So that would be the argument. But it certainly is easy for me to understand why an observer from the outside would come to the conclusion that you just enunciated. Affirmative action has reached its kind of most fullest flower when Harvard, it's Harvard, it's venerable, it's the greatest university on the planet, led by, well, a Black woman, and that's her main credential. I can see why a person would say that. All right. I want to leave Harvard behind. All my life I've wanted to leave Harvard behind in some way.

But in this conversation, I'd like to leave Harvard behind and tell you where I was earlier this week and ask a big question episodes of Uncommon Knowledge, my little program here at the Hoover Institution, with Condi Rice on the 60th anniversary of the Birmingham campaign of Dr. King's leading a protest in Birmingham and Bull Connors turning the fire hoses and police dogs on people. That happened six decades ago. And Condi was there. She was a little girl at the time, but she could remember it. To her credit, she said, I won't do this alone. People think that I'm a one-off. Let's do it with a couple of my childhood friends. And so Mary Bush, who grew up in Condi's neighborhood, an all-black neighborhood, and went on to a brilliant career in business, joined us, as did Freeman Hrabowski, who grew up across the street from Mary Bush. And Freeman Hrabowski just stepped down after 30 years as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Three really impressive people. I could go on, I won't. I'll just give you my, I'll get to the point as quickly as I can. In preparing for the show, my first thought was, these people are just heroic figures. And they're impressive people. I don't retract that. But as I got into it, as Condi

walked me around her old neighborhood, it was just born in on me the achievement, the achievement of the people who raised them. And this lost century, as Tom Sowell often makes the point, that academics pay a lot of attention to slavery, then we hear nothing for a century, and then we have the civil rights movement. And I was so struck that in this neighborhood, in segregated Jim Crow Alabama, from the century between the Emancipation Proclamation and 1963, the Birmingham Campaign, in that century, African Americans went from nothing. They were in, illiteracy was enforced. They were not permitted to learn. Not only did they hold no property, they were the property. In one century, what, four or five generations perhaps, you end up with, in that neighborhood at least, intact families, total literacy, deep literacy, a sense of neighborhood, a

deep understanding of church and community. And I thought to myself, now that the whole country is dissolving, now that you have out-of-wedlock birth rates over 30% among whites, now that we're in the same position, I had been thinking that we're in the same position as the Victorians. Remember Gertrude Himmelfarb's great work about you get the urban poverty of the 19th century in England, and they put their society back together. They reestablish marriage as a worthy institution. I just thought to myself, the example for us to draw on is this century of Black achievement where these people put a society, they essentially refounded a kind of their own civilization, black families

shattered by slavery, and a century later, again, in that neighborhood at least, we have a deep understanding of family, relationships, of husbands and wives. Anyway, I thought to myself, sorry, I'm getting long-winded here, but I thought to myself- No, you're good. You're good. Okay. I thought to myself, why isn't the history department of every major university in the country working on that century? How did those people, in the face of Jim Crow, of real racism, how did they reconstruct a civilization? Because we need to know how to do it ourselves now? Okay, is that just me losing my mind or is there something there?

No, that's brilliantly put. There's a lot there. You channel Bob Woodson, the great Robert Woodson in this respect, who's constantly talking about the vital importance of that historical lesson, the lesson of what African Americans, Negroes, is what we were called, accomplished in the decades, the first couple of generations, three generations after emancipation. I frankly, I think it's historically unprecedented, to be honest. I agree, I can't think of another example. I don't think you can find another example anywhere on the planet rate among African Americans is comparable to that that you see in middle-income countries throughout the world.

And they started from nothing. And the ethos, the ethos that allowed this population to achieve what they achieved, and it did involve religion, and it did involve conservative cultural values and so on. There's this wonderful book by Scott Davis, the author. It's called The World of Patience Groans, and it tells the story of a young woman born in hill country of Virginia to landowning free persons of color who finds herself in Richmond and is, you know, she's a princess, piano lessons, high standards, religion, raising her kids in the 19-teens, the 1920s, and he follows her into the 40s, 50s, and 60s and chronicles the early stages of this social social uh implosion of among uh african-americans that she very much deeply uh lamented and resented as it was happening all around her and it just in in microcosm it's just one little narrative but it captures the the spirit of what's going on

and i mean it's clear why it's not taught in history departments, because it gives the lie to the claim that the country has its knee on our neck, that it has its boot on our backs, that we can't accomplish anything. Well, hell, we can accomplish a great deal. We did accomplish a great deal. And it avoids the chilling implication. If this is what we as African-Americans have inherited from our forebears who suffered so much and achieved so much, the ball is in our court. What are we going to do with this opportunity? The specter of a failure or even a betrayal of the legacy of African-Americans in the country in the current generations, because, you know, you said 30 percent among whites. The Outer White Library says 70 percent among blacks. Right.

You know, I mean, look at Detroit. Look at Chicago. Look at Philadelphia. Look at Baltimore. Look at Southeast Washington, D.C. Look at Oakland. Look at New Orleans. Look at St. Louis.

I could go on. Pick up the newspaper and read, the failure is palpable. Whose fault is that? Yeah. So white supremacy is one kind of answer to that question. Black failure, I say it advisedly, and I said it, Peter, not you, is another kind of answer. And teaching that history would make that latter answer much more compelling.

Peter Robinson Tuesday morning, this is Tuesday morning, we began the day. Condie and I went out to the house in which she grew up. And by the way, it was a pretty nice house. It was about the same size, well, I grew up in sort of upper edge of the lower. In any event, it was maybe 900 to 1,000-foot house, same size house I grew up in, honestly. And I said, so what happened here in a school morning? And she described all the children getting ready to school, ready for school. And on a Saturday morning, everybody went off to lessons. Condi went to her piano lessons. A little girl across the street went to French lessons. Can you imagine? All black neighborhood. And she said, and you see that little hill there? We could skate down that hill.

And that hill over there, that was wonderful for skating too. So, we have this, she's painting the picture of a happy, intact neighborhood where the neighbors know each other. They all go to church on Wednesday as well as on Sunday and on Saturday is the youth fellowship. And she said, and oh, oh, up at the top of that hill and up at the top of that hill, my father and other fathers in the neighborhood, when they heard that there was trouble coming, they'd go up to those high points in the neighborhood with their guns to keep the Knight Riders out. Staggering the accomplishment against that kind of outside pressure. Unbelievable. And we don't hear about it. It's just, I just don't.

Anyway. So, Glenn, I'm giving you another homework lesson. Get Brown to establish a chair in the hidden history, the hidden century black accomplishment seems to me anyway well i don't forget who was he said um i think some some black american writer i forget said uh you know we didn't have a lot after civil war being civil war and and civil rights but the most important thing that we didn't have was help it was the help that did it um that sounds like something tom so could have said jason reilly recently yeah but you know what i'm i'm not done yet with claudine gay i'm sorry i just want to i've been struck by something about her because i i find um i find the uh the accusations of affirmative that she's an affirmative action hire to be um really really interesting because we're talking about a woman i've never met her i'm

sure she's a nice person but she's she's not african-american she's the daughter of haitian immigrants um she went to exeter and then she went to princeton and then she went to stanford then she got a phd from harvard what what disadvantage are we trying to correct here you're talking to the wrong guy i mean uh yeah amen uh and uh uh the the documentary filmmaker Rob Mott's Good Kid Productions has a little short out about how Roland Fryer, the great economist, an informed student of mine, someone I admire in his late 40s now, Clark medalist, MacArthur genius,breaking uh empirical work in a number of different fields and a bs excuse me can i say bs on your show a bs of course nine accusation that uh stewart taylor the legal journalist whom i have a great deal of respect for has written about uh and you

know you can look it up but it was a bs from a disgruntled employee of a former employer and employee who accused Roland of hostile environment. You know, making statements that were offensive and whatnot to women in his workplace got blown all out of proportion. And Claudine Gay tried to get his tenure revoked and came down on him with a ton of bricks from her position as dean of the faculty at harvard sanctioning him suspending without pay for two years closing his research laboratory which was a nine-figure funded uh a massive uh uh enterprise of roland doing path-breaking research in education law enforcement and race kind of thing and you, you know, Rob Montz, the filmmaker, Good Kid Productions, Harvard canceled Roland Frye. I can't remember the title of the short, but it wouldn't be hard to find.

Tells the story of how this woman, who was a marginal scholar and was certainly a child of privilege, in the name of protecting, because Roland's findings were sometimes pushing against the grain. I mean, he was the one who investigated the police shootings in Dallas and came to the conclusion that the use of lethal force by Dallas police, pardon me, Houston, Houston police officers was no more likely if the subject was Black than if the subject was white. In fact, maybe a little bit less likely. And that was so controversial. Roland is also a big education reform guy, a big charter school guy.

And, you know, he thinks that we're vastly underperforming with respect to providing opportunities to youngsters, low-income youngsters in cities right the country and so on so he's pushing against the grain Roland is and and they tried to cancel him and Claudine Gay was a main uh instigator in that and uh uh it it the who's the authentic black at the table wow you know who's the authentic black the son of haitian immigrants her father was an engineer if i recall correctly and uh she grew up in privileged exeter got any idea what it costs to go to exeter i do uh it does actually i'm sorry uh and uh here's roland who's you know his mother abandoned him as a kid his dad is in and out of prison. He was raised by his grandmother and came up hard, you know, hardscrabble, worked for everything that he ever got. And had a closer, more vital and intimate connection with the lives of everyday African-Americans than Claudine Gay would ever dream of. So the contrast is hard to miss and i try a thought experiment uh a former president

of yale not not not this one but i think maybe the one report i can't remember which one um told this story he said sort of off the record so you know i'm gonna try to keep it you can figure it out um that in faculty meetings when he there was something important to decide some budgetary issue something that really mattered um he would make sure or some crackpot idea that was just crazy he would make sure to have a uh a stem um area budget item on the docket because what you discovered is science technology all those people they don't want those teachers don't show up to these stupid things they don't want to sit there for a faculty meeting here a bunch of like french whatever intersectionals whatever's talk they just but if you if you put something on there that they really need to decide decide

they're going to show up and then you'll finally have a meeting in which you know the the smart people prevail so i mean just a thought experiment um president of harvard claudine gay uh was a professor of biology and she did research into you you know, brain function. And would we be here now? No. That was my point in reference to the plagiarism charges. I don't think they would really stick because at the end of the day, you know, with respect to Christopher Rufo, I mean, you know, it wasn't real plagiarism. It was just lazy writing and borrowing sentences from people without attribution. I'm not advising that. She should have,

you know. But if she had a real research record and had the respect of colleagues in a serious discipline for her intellectual heft, as Larry Summers did and does, No, I don't think we would be here. Hey, Glenn, I'd like to ask a closing question because I just got a note from our producer that Glenn has other commitments. Imagine that! No, he doesn't have other commitments. We got him for the rest of the day.

Glenn, observation and then the question. The observation is that it takes in some way very little in my experience or my observation to give kids at these elite campuses an alternative. Robbie George and really Robbie George alone, he's built a number of people around him, but Robbie George alone did it at Princeton and has built up almost an alternative university or at least an alternative course curriculum within Princeton. I am convinced that you, by your presence, make Brown a better place. Just make it better, smarter, more rigorous, less self-indulgent. All kinds of people who might engage in public nonsense don't, frankly, because they don't want to be attacked.

They don't want to be made to look the fools they are, and you would do that. Okay. So, it seems to me that you don't have to turn Harvard University entirely upside down. You need to find a few good scholars. You need Roland to be left alone and permitted to do his work. Perhaps you even need Roland to be celebrated. Is that achievable? Are you hopeful that we can at least do that much that that institutions will now feel that it is necessary i don't want to say conservatives but well i'll say it that that

they need a few conservative roland's no conservative exactly i don't know how we'd vote but that it can be done are you hopeful yeah? Yeah, this is, I think, the viewpoint diversity, you know, ideological diversity. I mean, we don't have to have a 50-50. You could have a 80-20, and if you had 20 people who were heterodox in their orientation, conservative perhaps in their instincts, loved their country and were not ashamed to say so, revered the standards of excellence and meritocratic achievement within their disciplines and were unwilling to compromise them, took the idea that students are, the arrow points forward, not backwards. It's not what they are when they walk in front of me, it's what they become after we

acquaint them with the greatest things that have been written and thought in the intellectual traditions that we inherit. A few people, 20 out of 100, sure, it could make a difference. As I say, I think the other side is dug in. They're dug in in the anthropology department, they're dug in in the Afro studies department, and so more than so on, and tenure is what it is. So I don't think they're going anywhere. But, you know, you're very generous in your estimation of the impact that I'm having.

I can tell you that I hear that kind of report from my students who do take my courses. And I have 100 signed up for my race and inequality course, a lecture course that I co-teach with my wonderful colleague, a classical liberal. And then Emily Skarbek, I want to name her because she and I are partners now in this enterprise, teaching about race here. But they come in and, you know, I got the black kid over there who's a typical woke kind of kid, but he respects Professor Lowry because I come and I don't pull punches and I tell him what I really think and we argue back and forth. And then I got the Jewish kid over here who's, you know, in the mix and they're, you know, and the Chinese kid who says, I never thought we could talk honestly about these matters. I've been keeping my mouth shut all these months because I was afraid of offending anybody thank you professor lowry for allowing there to be a conversation

so i think there's a hunger among students for this and um you know one step at a time another robin george here and uh another glenn lowry there forgive the self-aggrandizement uh we might just get there let's hope um i got one question for you and i gotta leave and this is really more of a maybe it's a uh personal temperament question why aren't you more pissed you don't seem pissed you seem uh well i invite you to when it comes out may 14 2024 late admissions confessions of a black conservative published by ww norton it's in it's in production where the book is done and it comes out i i try to give an account i used to be really pissed i mean uh furious at the Negro cognoscenti, that's what I called them, who smugly appropriated to themselves the right to speak to all things black.

And who, as our former president Barack Hussein Obama did, looked the other way. When demagogues and ambulance chasers like Al Sharpton define the voice of black America for the American public, I was furious with them. I think my fury was doing more harm to me than it was to them. You know, so I'm 75 years old, man. I mean, I got to give myself a stress relief opportunity, you know. So I've become a little bit more, you know, philosophical about it, a little bit more trying to take the long view and just try to tell the truth and, you know, try not to let it eat me away on the inside, you know. Glenn, you have a pub date. If you have a pub date, we need to schedule an interview about this book on Uncommon Knowledge. Absolutely. I have a pub date.

I have a publicist. If you drop me an email, I'll put you in touch with my team. Absolutely, we need to do this. May 14, 2024 is the pub date. All right, write it down. You will have an email from me this day my friend okay peter len thank you for joining us my pleasure merry christmas thank you thank you merry christmas to you both politically incorrect and revolutionary statement

merry christmas so long guys take care um you know it's like a cocktail hour um and not now i just mean like it's that's what i feel like with the holidays you know it's cocktail hour always oh you know it starts early starts around four o'clock um and let's face it peter after night with drinks you and i don't bounce back the next day like we used to so So I have to make a choice. I can either have a great night or a great next day. And that was the way I lived until I found Z-Biotics. Z-Biotics, pre-alcohol probiotic, is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. So here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. And it is this byproduct, not dehydration, which people always think blame

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unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money. No questions asked. All you got to do is head to zbiotics.com slash ricochet. That's Z, letter Z, biotics, all one word, dot com slash ricochet and use the code ricochet at checkout. You're 15% off. We thank you, ZBiotics, for sponsoring this episode. And we also think it's timely here during the holidays to think a little bit about z biotics and the day after that said man in glenn rowry glenn glenn glenn is fantastic yeah i love that man. I just love him. He is fantastic. And so courageous and so rigorous and so productive. He's the one who made the point himself that he's 75.

He's got his own podcast. He makes time to talk to us. He carries a full teaching load. And he's got a book coming out next spring. What the hell have you done this week? Not much, right? But if you're in the New York City area or you're're um i think they do it every now and then do it elsewhere he he used to do it i think he still does it a little um kind of a i don't know like i did it

in a comedy club um this conversation with john mcwarder and they would sit and they would talk and then they would yeah and then they bring some comedians on and the comedians would do some jokes and they would four of them sit five of them sit there and have a conversation that was just absolutely riveting and it you know i was trying to describe it as somebody said well when is it a panel like no is it a comedy show kind of it's kind of a little bit of everything and it's fantastic it's riveting um and it's all because i think his general personality and john mcward or two is um know, it's a little weary, world weary. You know, you can see Glenn saying, ah, you know this again. But it's optimistic.

And I guess that's why I asked him the question about anger. Like, it isn't curdled. That is true. It's something about the, I think think especially the progressive left that's so embittered and curdled um and i think probably the far right too uh that is kind of just i think it's missing the point okay listen could i slightly different topic but one that is far more important than anything we've discussed so far. Far more important.

Eggnog, bourbon or rum? Oh, that's a really good question. I prefer bourbon just in general because I'm an American and I like bourbon. But rum eggnog is delicious too. But a super, super cheat for eggnog. Yes. Get yourself some really good, not the best, not in the little pints, but good vanilla ice cream, French vanilla ice cream, and let it melt. Oh, really? And then thin it out to the extent that you want.

And if you use rum... With milk or heavy cream? Well, with milk or half and half, however heavy you want it. All right, all right. And if you use rum, put in a little coconut milk. Oh, really? And a little rum. Not a lot.

It doesn't really work with bourbon, but coconut and rum for some reason just go great together. coconut milk oh real and a little rum not a lot so it's not so much it kind of gives a little it doesn't really work with bourbon but coconut and rum for some reason just go just great together uh and um tell everybody you made it from scratch okay and that ladies and gentlemen is why you listen to the ricochet podcast yes and they will say this is really good how'd you do it well you know and then they'll kind of you kind of look like wearied and tired from it and then people say did you actually make a custard temper the egg yolks did you do that and then you kind of shrug like you don't want to take credit for it because you didn't but you just let you let the lie just sit there it's not a lie if you don't say it. It's only a, you know.

Pete Oh, that's the Episcopalian Divinity School. Pete Yeah, you're basically plagiarizing eggnog. Pete Yeah, exactly. Pete Yes, yes. I can't wait for you to get this degree underway, because that's exactly, I can't wait for your book on moral theology, which will be entitled The Eight Commandments. Pete Well, I had to, yes, the eight, well, the two. yes the eight well that's the two right the ten commandments choose any seven yeah the seven suggestions the seven the seven guidelines um i did i had dinner on tuesday night or monday night came or tuesday night with our old friend um john o'sullivan and uh and and j Jerry Baker from the Wall Street Journal. Oh, wonderful.

And, uh, I told, I said to John, you know, I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about this. And he looked at me and he said,

oh my God, those are both Catholics by the way. I mean, you're in sufferable. Yeah. You're in sufferable now. What's it going to be like when he's absolutely right. Absolutely.

100% correct. Uh, if you don't get a book out of this i will be just so cross so give me two but i'm going to say this publicly because i've said it to you a couple times and i'm going to say it publicly because i want other people to pile on you've written two books you've written two books well three if you count the one that nobody bought wait a minute i didn't really write that one that was called uh bigly the book that trump oh yes yes yes that i mean nobody bought that that was a clever idea but two books that were autobiographical conversations with my agent and set up joke

set up joke and both of those books were brilliant really really brilliant. Brilliant prose, funny, jammed with information. And that's not just my opinion. Andy Ferguson, who does not toss compliments around, gave you a rave review in the Weekly Standard. A magazine that no longer exists, which is my point. Why haven't you written? The time has come for you to write a new book new book journey journeys in divinity journeys in holiness a comedy by rob long conversations with my divine yeah well okay all right you've sold me start taking notes immediately i will do it i will do it now speaking of selling me yes um we would love for you if you enjoyed this podcast you go to ricochet.com and join.

If you join, you get to do a lot of cool stuff. Plus, Ricochet members like to get together. There will be a meetup in Chattanooga, Tennessee, January 14th. That's a long weekend, holiday weekend. And if you've not been to Chattanooga, I got in trouble by saying, you know, Tennessee has all these great cities. And then I kind of made a joke about Memphis not being one of them. Memphis is a great city. But Memphis is already on the map.

Everybody knows about Memphis. Places like Chattanooga, Knoxville, they're a little less known. Those are great cities. Really, you know, incredibly great places to eat, great places to see. You know, really, those are amazing. Tennessee is one of those states that I think people just forget how big it is. Like, it just goes on forever. You know, it's like a big rectangle, very thin

rectangle. So Chattanooga, Tennessee, that'll be Sunday, January 14th. That is a holiday weekend. And before we close, we'd like to thank ZBiotics. You can support us by supporting them.

They are fine and very loyal advertisers and a great product. If you have a minute, we would love for you to give us this Christmas gift. You go to Apple Podcasts, give us a five-star review. I know we keep saying it. It actually really does matter. It's one of those stupid algorithm things that matters a great deal um peter what are your christmas plans uh we're staying right here because all five children are coming to us for christmas and getting that arranged is a moonshot elon musk's plan to colonize mars cannot be more complicated than the arrangements that had to be made to get all five children inbound. So we're staying here through Christmas, and then the plan is to go up to Tahoe for a couple of days in the first couple of days of the new year. What about you? Where are you

going to be? I'm going to be right here in New York City. Right here in New York City. I've never done that. I've never been here for christmas so i'll be here for christmas amazing amazing and but but then will you be going out to connecticut you've got to meet up with your mother and brother at some point right or no well yeah but that's there they're gonna we're all gonna gather um oh they're coming in so you're coming in so it's going to be kind of a it's going to be a old movie new york city christmas and christmas day saint bartholomew's or what's the uh saint james saint james saint james now that made me on the upper on madison 71st and madison so that makes change depending on you know saint james obviously is my church but uh if you want you know pageantry and and uh and um you know you want the full the experience, you could go to the cathedral.

Or St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue is sort of giant and amazing. Right. The cathedral, it means St. John the Divine way, way up. St. John the Divine way up there. Right, right. Where the Christmas pageant doesn't, it used to include horses in the, sort of in the church, didn't it? I think you could, I think it might. I mean, I don't think it still does, but.

All right. Because as you know, I'm sure PETA has gotten involved. But I mean, yeah, it's big enough. You could have a whole thing. But also, the city's beautiful. It's at its best in Christmas. Everything's all decorated and looks beautiful. All right, well done.

Well, but I think I might see you next week. And in between. Have a great week. Same to you. See you in seven days. Merry Christmas. I'm off to make some eggnog. Merry Christmas. Yeah, make it the easy way.

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