| Roland Fryer | |
| Birth Name: | Roland Gerhard Fryer Jr. |
| Birth Date: | 4 June 1977 |
| Birth Place: | Daytona Beach, Florida, U.S. |
| Occupation: | Economist, professor |
| Awards: | MacArthur Fellowship (2011) Calvó-Armengol Prize (2012) John Bates Clark Medal (2015) |
| Thesis Title: | Mathematical Models of Discrimination and Inequality |
| Thesis Url: | https://books.google.com/books/about/Mathematical_Models_of_Discrimination_an.html?id=8AAjnQEACAAJ |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Tomas Sjöström |
| Influences: | Gary Becker Steven Levitt Glenn Loury |
| Workplaces: | Harvard University (2006–present) |
| Education: | University of Texas at Arlington (BA) Pennsylvania State University (PhD) |
| Discipline: | Economics |
Roland Gerhard Fryer Jr. (born June 4, 1977) is an American economist and professor at Harvard University.
Fryer 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, ever to be awarded tenure at Harvard.[1] He has received numerous awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship in 2011 and the John Bates Clark Medal in 2015.
Fryer began his research career studying social image and segregation, and then moved toward empirical issues, particularly those concerning race and ethnicity. His work on the racial achievement gap in the US led to a stint as chief equality officer for New York City 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 an 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, Harvard suspended Fryer without pay for two years, closed his lab, and barred him from teaching or supervising students citing allegations of improper conduct.[2] [3] In 2021, Harvard allowed Fryer to return to teaching and research.[4]
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, leaving Fryer on his own.[5] He became a "full fledged gangster by his teens".[6]
Fryer attended Lewisville High School, where he starred in football and basketball. He earned an athletic scholarship from the University of Texas at Arlington. However, he never actually played for the Texas–Arlington Mavericks; instead he decided to embrace academics, joining the Honors College, whose dean helped find him an academic scholarship.[7] He graduated in 1998 with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in economics in two-and-a-half years of study while working full time at a McDonalds drive-thru.[8]
Fryer then did doctoral study in economics at Pennsylvania State University, receiving a Ph.D. in 2002. He then did postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago with Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker. Fryer has collaborated with several other academics, including Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist and author of Freakonomics, Glenn Loury, a Brown University economist, and Edward Glaeser, an urban economist at Harvard.
Upon completing a three-year fellowship with the Harvard Society of Fellows 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 Fellows.
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 journals.[9] In 2007, at age 30, he became the second youngest professor, and youngest African American, to ever receive tenure at Harvard (Noam Elkies was 26). In 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed Professor Fryer to be the New York City Department of Education's Chief Equality Officer. Professor Fryer both inspired and oversaw the Opportunity NYC 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."[10] In 2009, Fryer formed the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University, and served as its director until its closure ten years later in 2019.[11] In 2011, he was named a MacArthur Fellow[12] and received the 2015 John Bates Clark Medal.[13]
Fryer began his research career as an applied theorist, developing models of social image[14] and measures of segregation.[15] His research subsequently moved into empirical issues, especially those connected with race. In 2016, Fryer published a working paper concluding that although minorities (African Americans and Hispanics) are more likely to experience police use of force 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.[16] [17] [18] [19] Fryer responded to some of these criticisms in an interview with The New York Times.[20] In 2019, Fryer's paper was published in the Journal of Political Economy. 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 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.[21] 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."[22]
Fryer is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the NBER Economics of Education (EE) and Labor Studies (LS) programs.[23]
In March 2018, Harvard barred Fryer from his research lab, the Education Innovation Laboratory (EdLabs), upon launching an investigation into Title IX complaints against him alleging sexual harassment.[24]
Fryer responded that he was "unfairly scrutinized ... for his skin color." Harvard confirmed that its Office for Dispute Resolution (ODR) received complaints against Fryer in January, March, and April 2018.[25] The investigation found that he had made references over text to various colleagues engaging in sex acts according to the New York Times, though no physical actions were alleged.[26]
Upon completing their investigation, the recommendation of ODR was Fryer should be required to take "workplace sensitivity training". This recommendation for training was passed to a panel of Harvard tenured faculty including Lawrence D. Bobo and Claudine Gay (later in December 2023, Gay resigned from her post as president of Harvard University following allegations of plagiarism and complaints about her handling of antisemitism on campus).[27]
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.[28] 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".[29]
In July 2019, the faculty panel suspended Fryer from the Harvard faculty for two years without pay.[25] [30] Harvard determined that upon Fryer's return to the faculty, he would be barred from serving as an adviser or supervisor, from access to graduate fellows, and from teaching graduate workshops, but permitted him to teach graduate classes.[30] Fryer had been one of Harvard's most highly paid professors.[30] Harvard permanently closed EdLabs in September 2019.[31] In 2021, Harvard allowed Fryer to return to teaching and research.
Fryer is married to Franziska Michor, a professor of biology at Harvard. They met in 2006, as members of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He "...courted her by betting a dinner date on whether he could find evidence that smoking reduces cancer..."[32]
Fryer has performed stand-up comedy at The Elbow Room, in West Hartford, Connecticut, inside of their basement comedy club "Stand-Up Underground."[33]
In 2008 The Economist listed Fryer as one of the top eight young economists in the world.[34] In 2011, Fryer was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly referred to as a "Genius Grant".[35] He is the recipient of the 2015 John Bates Clark Medal, 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."[36] He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[37] He is also a recipient of the Calvó-Armengol International Prize and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. At the age of 30, he became the youngest African American to receive tenure at Harvard.[38]