2017 TIAA Lecture Series: Dr. Roland Fryer
Award-winning Harvard economist Dr. Roland Fryer applies economic tools to explore social issues including crime, discrimination, racial and gender differences, poverty, family structure, urban problems, and intergenerational mobility.
Fryer is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, founder and faculty director of the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard, and a former junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, one of academia’s most prestigious research posts. At thirty, Fryer became the youngest African-American to receive tenure from Harvard, and has been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation and the inaugural Alphonse Fletcher Award for scholars whose works contribute to improving race relations in America.
Fryer is a 2009 recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He is the 2015 winner of the highly esteemed John Bates Clark Medal for being the most promising economist in America under the age of 40.
Fryer has published numerous papers on the racial achievement gap, causes and consequences of distinctively black names, affirmative action, the impact of the crack cocaine epidemic and historically black colleges and universities. In 2009, he appeared Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s most influential people.