In 2008, at the age of 30, Dr. Roland Fryer, Jr., became the youngest African-American to win tenure as an economics professor at Harvard University.
Now, Fryer is facing allegations of sexual misconduct and is under investigation by Harvard University and the state of Massachusetts.
Fryer, who grew up in a tough neighborhood in Lewisville, Texas and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Penn State University, has been on the faculty at Harvard since 2005 and has been a rising star in academia.
In a statement released by his lawyer, George J. Leontire, Fryer denied the allegations.
“It’s disgraceful the complainant’s lawyers have chosen to publicize their unproven accusations rather than to allow the legal process to determine the merits of their client’s claims,” said Leontire. “Professor Fryer looks forward to a full and impartial forum to address these outrageous allegations.”
Fryer rose to national prominence when he published a paper in 2016 titled “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force. It asserted that racial bias was not used in police shootings.
The scholarship was condemned by scholar-activists and was cited by conservative television pundits who argued that the recent spate of shootings—often of unarmed Black men—were justified.
