Roland Fryer

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. He became a "full fledged gangster by his teens." Fryer attended Lewisville High School, where he started in football and basketball. He earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas at Arlington for basketball. 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. He graduated in 1998 with a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in economics after two-and-a-half years of study while working full time at a McDonald's drive-thru. 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. == Academic career ==

By 2005, Fryer was regarded as one of Black America's and Harvard's rising academic stars, after publishing numerous economics-related papers in prominent academic journals. In 2007, at age 30, he became one of the youngest professors, and youngest African American, to ever receive tenure at Harvard (Noam Elkies was 26). 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. Also in 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed Fryer to be the New York City Department of Education's Chief Equality Officer. 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." In 2009, Fryer formed the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University, and served as its director until its closure following Fryer's harassment controversy (below) ten years later in 2019. In 2011, he was named a MacArthur Fellow and received the 2015 John Bates Clark Medal. 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. == Police Shootings Research ==

In 2016, Fryer published a controversial 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. Fryer responded to some of these criticisms in an interview with The New York Times. In 2019, Fryer's paper was published in the Journal of Political Economy. Fryer responded by saying Durlauf and Heckman erroneously claim that his sample is "based on stops," and that the "vast majority of the data [...] is gleaned from 911 calls for service in which a civilian requests police presence." == Harassment Controversy ==

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. Fryer responded that he was "unfairly scrutinized ... for his skin color." 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. 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. 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". In July 2019, the faculty panel suspended Fryer from the Harvard faculty for two years without pay. 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. In 2021, Harvard allowed Fryer to return to teaching and research. == Awards and honors ==

In 2008 The Economist listed Fryer as one of the top eight young economists in the world. In 2011, Fryer was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly referred to as a "Genius Grant". 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." He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 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. == 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. He "...courted her by betting a dinner date on whether he could find evidence that smoking reduces cancer..." Fryer has performed stand-up comedy at The Elbow Room, in West Hartford, Connecticut, inside of their basement comedy club "Stand-Up Underground." == Selected works ==