Roland G. Fryer Jr.
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Roland Gerhard Fryer Jr. (born June 4, 1977) is an American
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...
and professor at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
. Following a difficult childhood, Fryer earned an athletic scholarship to the
University of Texas at Arlington The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA or UT Arlington) is a public research university in Arlington, Texas. The university was founded in 1895 and was in the Texas A&M University System for several decades until joining the University of ...
, but once there chose to concentrate instead on academics. Graduating '' cum laude'' in years, he went on to receive a Ph.D. in economics from Pennsylvania State University in 2002 and completed postdoctoral work at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
with
Gary Becker Gary Stanley Becker (; December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of ...
. He joined the faculty of Harvard University and rapidly rose through the academic ranks; in 2007, at age 30, he became the second-youngest professor, and the youngest
African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
, ever to be awarded
tenure Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...
at Harvard.Roland Fryer, "Curriculum Vitae"
/ref> He has received numerous awards, including a
MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
in 2011 and the
John Bates Clark Medal The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...
in 2015. Fryer began his research career studying social image and segregation, and then moved toward empirical issues, particularly those concerning
race and ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
. His work on the racial achievement gap in the US led to a stint as Chief Equality Officer for
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which role Fryer implemented a pilot program rewarding low-income students with money for earning high test scores. In 2019, he published a controversial analysis arguing that Black and Hispanic Americans were no more likely than white Americans to be shot by police in a given interaction with police. In 2019, a series of investigations at Harvard determined that Fryer had engaged in "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature" against at least five women, that he had fostered a hostile work environment in his lab, and also cited unspecified conduct violations regarding Fryer's grant spending and lab finances. As a result, Harvard suspended Fryer without pay for 2 years, closed his lab, and barred him from teaching or supervising students. In 2021, Harvard allowed Fryer to return to teaching and research, although he remained barred from supervising graduate students for at least another 2 years. Fryer apologized for the "insensitive and inappropriate comments that led to my suspension", saying that he "didn’t appreciate the inherent power dynamics in my interactions, which led me to act in ways that I now realize were deeply inappropriate for someone in my position."


Early life and education

Fryer grew up in Lewisville, Texas, where he had moved with his abusive alcoholic father at the age of 4. Fryer's mother left when he was very young, and his father, who beat his son, was convicted of rape, effectively leaving Fryer to fend for himself. Fryer became a "full fledged gangster by his teens". Fryer attended
Lewisville High School Lewisville High School is a public high school in Lewisville, Texas in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The oldest of five high schools in the Lewisville Independent School District, it was opened in 1897, making it the only school in the district to ...
, where he starred in football and
basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
. He earned an
athletic scholarship An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university or a private high school awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport. Athletic scholarships are common in the United ...
from the
University of Texas at Arlington The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA or UT Arlington) is a public research university in Arlington, Texas. The university was founded in 1895 and was in the Texas A&M University System for several decades until joining the University of ...
. However, he never actually played for the
Texas–Arlington Mavericks The UT Arlington Mavericks (abbreviated UT Arlington, UTA, and Mavs) are the athletic teams that represent the University of Texas at Arlington in Arlington, Texas. The Mavericks currently compete in the NCAA Division I Western Athletic Confere ...
; instead he decided to embrace academics, joining the Honors College, whose dean helped find him an academic scholarship. He graduated in 1998 with a
bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
'' magna cum laude'' in two-and-a-half years of study while working full time at a McDonalds drive-thru."Roland G. Fryer." Contemporary Black Biography.
Vol. 56.
Thomson Gale Gale is a global provider of research and digital learning resources. The company is based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, west of Detroit. It has been a division of Cengage since 2007. The company, formerly known as Gale Research and the Gale G ...
, 2006. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, 2009. Document Number: K1606003406. Fee. Accessed 2009-12-20 via
Fairfax County Public Library The Fairfax County Public Library (FCPL) is a public library system headquartered in Suite 324 of The Fairfax County Government Center in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. Hennen's American Public Library Ratings ...
.
Fryer then did doctoral study in economics at Pennsylvania State University, receiving a
Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in 2002. He then did
postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...
at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
with Nobel laureate economist
Gary Becker Gary Stanley Becker (; December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist who received the 1992 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago, and was a leader of ...
. Fryer has collaborated with several other academics, including Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist and author of ''
Freakonomics ''Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything'' is the debut non-fiction book by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and ''New York Times'' journalist Stephen J. Dubner. Published on April 12, 2005, by Will ...
'',
Glenn Loury Glenn Cartman Loury (born September 3, 1948) is an American economist, academic, and author. He is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, where he has taught since 2005. At the age of ...
, a Brown University economist, and
Edward Glaeser Edward Ludwig Glaeser (born May 1, 1967) is an American economist and Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is also Director for the Cities Research Programme at the International Growth Centre. He was educated ...
, an urban economist at Harvard. Upon completing a three-year fellowship with the
Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...
at the end of the 2005–2006 academic year, Fryer joined Harvard's economics department as an assistant professor. In 2005, Fryer was also selected as one of the first
Fletcher Foundation The Fletcher Foundation was a nonprofit foundation that supported civil rights, education, and environmental education. The foundation supported efforts to develop a more just society with more equal opportunities for more of the population prima ...
Fellows.


Academic career

By 2005, Fryer was regarded as one of Black America's and Harvard's rising academic stars, in the aftermath of publishing numerous economics-related papers in prominent
academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...
s. In 2007, at age 30, he became the second youngest professor, and youngest African-American, to ever receive
tenure Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...
at Harvard (
Noam Elkies Noam David Elkies (born August 25, 1966) is a professor of mathematics at Harvard University. At the age of 26, he became the youngest professor to receive tenure at Harvard. He is also a pianist, chess national master and a chess composer. Ear ...
was 26). In 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed Professor Fryer to be the
New York City Department of Education The New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is the department of the government of New York City that manages the city's public school system. The City School District of the City of New York (or the New York City Public Schools) is t ...
's Chief Equality Officer. Professor Fryer both inspired and oversaw the
Opportunity NYC Opportunity NYC was an experimental conditional cash transfer program (CCT) by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. Announced in April 2007, it was the first CCT program to be launched in the United States. Its initial phases were funde ...
project, which studied how students in low-performing schools respond to financial incentives, offering as much as $500 for "doing well on standardized tests and showing up for class." In 2009, Fryer formed the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University, and served as its Director until its closure ten years later, in 2019. In 2011, he was named a
MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
and received the 2015
John Bates Clark Medal The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...
. Professor Fryer discusses his education work with
Russ Roberts Russell David "Russ" Roberts (born September 19, 1954) is an American economist, who is currently a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and president designate of Shalem College in Jerusalem. He is known for communicating ...
in a
October 8th 2022 EconTalk podcast
Fryer began his research career as an applied theorist, developing models of social image and measures of segregation. His research subsequently moved into empirical issues, especially those connected with race. In 2016, Fryer published a
working paper A working paper or work paper may be: *A working paper or technical paper. Often, authors will release working papers to share ideas about a topic or to elicit feedback before submitting to a peer reviewed conference or academic journal. Worki ...
concluding that although minorities (African Americans and Hispanics) are more likely to experience
police use of force The use of force, in the context of law enforcement, may be defined as the "amount of effort required by police to compel compliance by an unwilling subject". Use of force doctrines can be employed by law enforcement officers and military pers ...
than whites, they were not more likely to be shot by police than whites in a given interaction with police. The paper generated considerable controversy and criticism. Fryer responded to some of these criticisms in an interview with ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
''. In 2019, Fryer's paper was published in the '' Journal of Political Economy''. Some scholars criticized Fryer's study, arguing that due to selection bias, he was unable to draw any conclusions about racial bias in shootings from police stops. If police are more likely to stop a black person than a white person, then the average white person that they stop might be dissimilar to the average black person (for example, the white person might be behaving in a more threatening manner), thus leading to faulty inferences about racial bias in shootings. Some of these potential differences (e.g. type of weapon held by the suspect, and whether they attacked the police officer), were accounted for in the analysis. A 2019 study by Princeton University political scientists disputed the findings by Fryer, saying that if police had a higher threshold for stopping whites, this might mean that the whites, Hispanics and blacks in Fryer's data are not similar. Nobel-laureate
James Heckman James Joseph Heckman (born April 19, 1944) is a Nobel Prize-winning American economist at the University of Chicago, where he is The Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College; Professor at the Harris School of Pu ...
and Steven Durlauf, both University of Chicago economists, published a response to the Fryer study, writing that the paper "does not establish credible evidence on the presence or absence of discrimination against African Americans in police shootings" due to issues with selection bias. Fryer responded by saying Durlauf and Heckman erroneously claim that his sample is "based on stops". Further, he states that the "vast majority of the data ..is gleaned from 911 calls for service in which a civilian requests police presence." Fryer is a research associate of the
National Bureau of Economic Research The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic c ...
, and a member of the NBER Economics of Education (EE) and Labor Studies (LS) programs.


Suspension from Harvard

In March 2018, Harvard barred Fryer from his research lab, the Education Innovation Laboratory (EdLabs), upon launching an investigation into
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
complaints against him alleging sexual harassment. Fryer alleged that he was "unfairly scrutinized ... for his skin color." Harvard confirmed that its Office for Dispute Resolution received complaints against Fryer in January, March, and April 2018. In December 2018, Fryer resigned from the executive committee of the American Economic Association, to which he had been elected (but on which he had not yet taken up his seat); Fryer submitted his resignation after coming under pressure from fellow economists to step down due to the sexual harassment allegations against him. In a letter to ''The New York Times'' later that month, Fryer expressed regret for having "allowed, encouraged and participated" in a collegial atmosphere at EdLabs that included "off-color jokes" and comments about personal lives, but denied bullying, retaliating against employees, or making sexual advances to any employee. Harvard's investigation concluded that Fryer had "engaged in unwanted sexual conduct toward several individuals" and "exhibited a pattern of behavior that failed to meet expectations of conduct within our community and was harmful to the well-being of its members." In July 2019, Fryer was suspended from the Harvard faculty for two years without pay, a disciplinary action determined by a panel of tenured faculty. Harvard also determined that, after returning from suspension, Fryer cannot be an adviser or supervisor, have access to graduate fellows, or teach graduate workshops, but can teach graduate classes. Fryer had been one of Harvard's most highly paid professors. As the sanctions took effect, Harvard permanently closed EdLabs in September 2019.


Personal life

Fryer is married to Franziska Michor, a professor of biology at Harvard. They met in 2006, as members of the
Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...
. He "...courted her by betting a dinner date on whether he could find evidence that smoking reduces cancer..." He has performed stand-up comedy at The Elbow Room, in West Hartford, Connecticut, inside of their basement comedy club "Stand-Up Underground."


Awards and honors

In 2008 ''
The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...
'' listed Fryer as one of the top eight young economists in the world. In 2011, Fryer was a recipient of a
MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...
, commonly referred to as a "Genius Grant". He is the recipient of the 2015
John Bates Clark Medal The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...
, awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."


Selected works

* * * *


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fryer, Roland G. Jr. 1977 births Living people People from Daytona Beach, Florida 21st-century American economists American social scientists University of Texas at Arlington alumni Pennsylvania State University alumni Harvard University faculty MacArthur Fellows African-American economists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Economists from Florida Fellows of the Econometric Society 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people