Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Is “Race” Over? Citizenship, Backlash, and the Quiet Politics of Self-Censorship

Tue, February 24, 2026
Dinner Program
Glenn Loury, in conversation with Michael Fortner

In recent years, American public life has entered a period of reassessment and backlash. The post-2020 surge in anti-racist politics has been met by the rollback of affirmative action, growing skepticism toward DEI initiatives, and the reemergence of white identity politics. These developments raise a deeper and more unsettling question: have we entered a new phase in American political culture—one that signals a broader rejection of the moral premises of the Black freedom movement itself? In this moderated conversation, Glenn Loury, professor emeritus of social sciences, economics, international and public affairs at Brown University, will explore what these shifts mean for American citizenship, democratic legitimacy, and public discourse. Drawing on his recent work on race, inequality, and civic belonging—as well as his book Self-Censorship—Loury will examine not only the politics of backlash, but the quieter, often overlooked phenomenon that accompanies it: the growing tendency of citizens, scholars, and institutions to withhold dissenting views out of fear of social sanction. 

Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor Emeritus of Social Sciences, Professor Emeritus of Economics, and Professor Emeritus of International and Public Affairs, joined Brown University in 2005. He is an academic economist who has made scholarly contributions to the fields of welfare economics, income distribution, game theory, industrial organization, and natural resource economics. He is also a prominent social critic and public intellectual, having published over 200 articles in journals of public affairs in the U.S. and abroad on the issues of racial inequality and social policy.

Loury is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a past Vice President of the American Economics Association. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was for many years a contributing editor at The New Republic magazine.

Among the issues Loury studies are racial affirmative action; dysfunctional social identity; status transmission across generations; and cognitive theories of racial stigma. He also writes popular essays on social and political themes as a public intellectual.

Michael J. Fortner, Pamela B. Gann Associate Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College, will moderate the conversation.
 

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Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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