*Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative*

That is the new memoir from Glenn C. Loury, and I cracked it open right away, here is one excerpt:

But now Harvard is looking to retool its ailing Afro-American Studies department, and Tom [Schelling] serves on the committee whose job it is to recruit new faculty worthy of the institution.  The chair of that committee is the distinguished black historian Nathan Huggins, who has recently taken the helm in Afro Studies at Harvard.  Apparently my Econometrica paper on intergenerational transfers had gotten their attention, and my writing on the dynamics of racial income differences has piqued their interest.  I’m just six years past my PhD and they’re offering a joint appointment as full professor of economics and of Afro-American Studies.  The appointment would make me the first black tenured professor in the history of Harvard’s economics department.  I like the sound of that.  In the past, the timing hadn’t quite felt right for Harvard.  But now it does feel right, and I have the sense that if I say no a third time, they won’t be calling again.

You can pre-order the book here, it is self-recommending of course.  And here is my earlier Conversation with Glenn Loury.