Roland G. Fryer Jr
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Roland G. Fryer Jr. is a 29 year-old professor of economics at Harvard University. In addition to being affiliated with Harvard University and the Society of Fellows, he maintains offices at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fryer is widely regarded to be one of black America and Harvard's rising economic stars, having published numerous papers in prominent academic journals over the past few years. The New York Times ran an extensive profile of Fryer, entitled "Toward a Unified Theory of Black America" in March of 2005 that dealt extensively with Fryer's rough upbringing: Fryer's mother left when he was very young, and his father, who beat his son, was convicted of rape, effectively leaving Roland to fend for himself.
A graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, which Fryer attended on an athletic scholarship and from which he graduated in 2.5 years while holding down a full-time job, Fryer pursued his Ph.D. in economics from Pennsylvania State University. He also conducted post-doctoral work at the University of Chicago with renowned economist Gary Becker. Over the past three years, Fryer has collaborated with several other prominent academics, including Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economist and author of Freakonomics, Glenn Loury, a prominent black 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 took on a teaching responsibility as an assistant professor (though he had accepted a job offer from the Harvard Economics Department before he won the fellowship, the department allowed him to defer teaching obligation for the three years). Fyrer was also selected as one of the first Alphonse Fletcher Foundation Fellows in 2005.
Fryer currently teaches an undergraduate economics course entitled "Race in America" that surveys a variety of empirical, theoretical, and descriptive studies, several of which are Fryer's own, that attempt to explore the underlying causes of racial disparities in the United States. He is regarded by his students as an entertaining lecturer.
