Glenn Loury Warns about Institutionalized Self-Censorship and the Decline of Honest Discussions

Glenn C. Loury, a renowned economist and Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, came to Stanford’s campus to speak as part of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society’s Arrow Lecture Series on Ethics and Leadership. Loury addressed the growing norm of self-censorship and how the pattern of silence has become a structural phenomenon in our institutions.

“My central concern is that in important institutions, the universities, the press, the scientific communities, even democratic politics, candor is in short supply,” Loury said.

Loury, author of Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Brown University, where his work has focused on racial and social policies present in the US. His new book Self-Censorship analyzes the powerful social forces that lead to keeping opinions hidden for fear of them being viewed as unpopular. 

“If you meditate on Glenn Loury’s speech for long enough, you may find, as many of us have, that he has very often allowed you to expand your understanding to see further into the life of America and the world, and very often, he has allowed you to change your mind,” Leif Wenar, Faculty Director of the Ethics Center, said to introduce the event.

For Loury, this concern of self-censorship has personal ties as well. As a fellow at the Manhattan Institute of New York, he brought speakers on his podcast “The Glenn Show” that contradicted the institute’s opinions about the Israel-Gaza conflict. In response, the Manhattan Institute terminated funding for his podcast and did not renew his fellowship appointment.

Loury stresses the importance of supporting discussions that foster dissent and disagreement, and how the lack of it is “an institutional failure. It's not just a failure of people's character,” he said. “We don't protect people for being dissidents, and we allow our institutions to get captured by partisan interests who then corrupt the environment.”

Addressing this problem is tricky, as Loury notes, because sharing thoughts can lead to alienation and lasting consequences. “When reputational penalties are large, and persuasion is unlikely, silence and expressive distortions follow.” The Ethics Center’s programs, such as the Summer Frosh Civil Dialogues Program, Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Program Fellowship and the Stanford Practical Ethics Club, are places to reverse this trend and instead think critically through disagreement and discourse.

To reverse this growing pattern, Loury urges for fewer personal consequences for sharing truthful beliefs. “Reform should not focus on enforcing a certain view, but rather on lowering the private cost of honest dissent,” he said. “Only then can collective judgments be informed by the full range of relevant experiences.”

To watch the full lecture, To Tell the Truth? Self-Censorship and Public Discourse by Glenn C, Loury, please visit our youtube channel.