Glenn Loury on the Protests at Brown

Glenn Loury, an eminent professor at Brown and a black man, posted a long rant about the recent protests on his Facebook page:

I am less than enthusiastic -- indeed, I am appalled -- about the current agitation and uproar over the purported endemic racism at my home university. . . .

The notion that Brown needs a revolutionary reshaping in order to become hospitable to "students of color", that idea that "anti-black pedagogy" at Brown needs to be countered with some mandatory indoctrination of faculty, the proposal that external student committees should review purportedly "racist" departmental appointment processes, the initiative of creating "specialty positions" in academic departments to ensure their openness to hiring "faculty of color" -- these are all mischievous intrusions on the academic prerogatives of a distinguished faculty which no self-respecting scholar of any color should welcome. They are a step onto a slippery slope that slides down into intellectual mediocrity, and I will have nothing to do with them. Is that clear and explicit enough?