Late Admissions: Lessons from Glenn Loury’s Memoir

In his stunning new memoir, "Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative," economist Glenn Loury surveys the stratospheric highs and abysmal lows of a life lived in both the spotlight and the shadows. Loury tells the story of his rise from Chicago’s South Side to Harvard’s Kennedy School, his transformation from working-class factory clerk to elite economic theorist, and his emergence as a fire-breathing conservative public intellectual in Ronald Reagan’s America. Yet Loury’s public positions were often at odds with private behavior-like serial adultery and hard drug use-that threatened to derail his ascent when they were exposed. "Late Admissions" documents a unique man’s struggle to defeat “the enemy within” and explores the entanglements of race and personal identity, reason and religious belief, and tradition and generational conflict-all of which have shaped both his life and American culture since the 1960s.
Please join us for a virtual conversation featuring Glenn Loury, author of "Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative." Loury, together with Gerald Early of the Washington University of St. Louis and Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Jason Riley, will unpack the larger themes in his compelling memoir and lessons they hold for today.