Harvard's War Against Its Superstar Black Professor
Harvard's War Against Its Superstar Black Professor A new documentary casts light on the story of Roland Fryer. The Editors Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer (Christopher Kwok). Roland Fryer, an economics professor at Harvard, is a superstar by any measure. At the age of 30, he became the youngest black person ever to receive tenure at the Harvard. The MacArthur Foundation declared him a genius in 2011. And in 2015 Fryer won the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, given yearly to the most promising economist under 40. Then, out of the blue in 2018, the university launched an investigation into claims that Fryer was guilty of sexual harassment. The harassment in question amounted to a handful of unseemly jokes and text messages. But that didn’t stop Fryer’s inquisitors from suspending him without pay for two years and shutting down his lab. It was an unbelievable turn of events. Abandoned at birth by his mother, Fryer clawed his way out of poverty to land a spot a...