(Matthew Doarnberger, Headline USA) At the age of 30, economics professor Roland Fryer became the youngest black person to ever be awarded tenure at Harvard University. He has since won numerous awards for his academic research and is the author of more than 50 papers.
However, in a recent interview with Bari Weiss, Fryer revealed that he needed armed protection when he went out in public after becoming a target of radical leftists due to a controversial 2016 study about police shootings.
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For part of the research of his study, titled An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force, Fryer sent out graduate-student researchers to conduct police ride-alongs in four urban locales: Camden, N.J.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Houston, Texas; and Massachusetts.
However, the findings of the study were not what Fryer initially hypothesized.
“We didn’t find any racial bias in police shootings,” he said. “That was really surprising to me, because I expected to see it.”
Fryer then conducted the analysis again, just to make sure it was correct.
“I had eight full-time [research assistants] that it took to do this over nearly a year,” he said.
“When I found the surprising result, I hired eight fresh ones and redid it to make sure,” he added. “They came up with the same exact answer.”
Upon obtaining the surprising data, Fryer was advised by other colleagues not to publish it over the fear that it could ruin his career. He had to live under police protection for 30 or 40 days and needed an armed guard to visit the local grocery store.
“People lost their minds,” he exclaimed. “It was really, truly crazy.”
Even after the initial furor, the episode made Fryer a target for deranged leftists—despite the fact that he, himself, is by no means conservative, the New York Post noted.
In particular, future ex-Harvard President Claudine Gay—who was, at the time, climbing her way up the ranks as a college dean—led the inquisition against Fryer, whom she claimed, ironically in retrospect, “exhibited a pattern of behavior” that fell short of the Ivy League school’s standards for excellence.
The married father of young children was suspended for two years following secretive tribunals over #MeToo-era allegations that he had engaged in “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature toward four women” in his graduate student lab.
Fryer denies the allegations.
Despite the heavy toll of pursuing intellectual honesty, Fryer remains unrepentant.
“I’m willing to tell the truth,” he stated in a 2022 video conference discussing his work. “I don’t care about the personal cost.”
Weiss, who interviewed Fryer for the Free Press, shares with him the experience of being a classical liberal who was, to some extent “red-pilled” after bearing witness to the radicalization of the Left and, in turn, facing the brunt of cancel culture.
The former New York Times columnist resigned amid the fallout from a June 2020 column by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., that criticized Black Lives Matter riots for “plung[ing] many American cities into anarchy.”
The Times subsequently caved to pressure from Twitter and newsroom cry-bullies such as reporter Taylor Lorenz, who demanded that it apologize for running the Republican perspective and forced the resignation of editorial-page editor James Bennet.
Weiss has since become one of the charter trustees for the University of Austin, a school dedicated to advancing academic freedom without the pernicious influence of leftist politics.
Fryer, meanwhile, may have gotten the last laugh after Gay faced accusations of plagiarism and anti-Semitism that forced her from her position as Harvard president, although she remains on the faculty.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
