Black Harvard Professor Who Challenged Woke Orthodoxies Needs Armed Protection

Harvard professor Roland Fryer, who at age 30 became the youngest African-American to earn a tenure-track position at an Ivy League school, revealed that he faced threats and had to obtain armed security after publishing a study showing that there is no racial bias in police-involved shootings. .

Mr Fryer, who has received numerous awards for his academic research, in 2016 published a study that upended the prevailing leftist narrative that police-involved shootings are tinged with racism.

Their study found that while black people were more likely to be targeted by non-lethal police forces, such as being thrown against a wall, they were no more likely to be shot than white people.

In fact, after controlling for a variety of different circumstances, Mr. Fryer's research actually found that officers were less likely to shoot black people than white people in similar situations, although the difference was not statistically significant.

Their findings contradict claims by groups like Black Lives Matter that police readily resort to deadly force when dealing with black suspects.

"I let the data speak and I don't care what they say," Fryer said during a 2022 conference. video conference discussing their work. “I am willing to tell the truth. “I don’t care about the personal cost.”

"I believe that the literal truth will set us free," he added.

More recently, in a Interview on February 13 With Bari Weiss of The Free Press, Fryer discussed the price he had to pay for telling the truth.

He said that after publishing his study (against the advice of his Harvard colleagues), people “lost their minds” and he faced a torrent of complaints and threats.

'All hell broke loose'

Fryer told Weiss that he hoped his research would show different conclusions, given prevailing narratives that police are driven by racial animus to shoot black people at disproportionately higher rates.

He said that when his research showed no racial bias in police-involved shootings, he hired a new team of assistants and repeated the study, but the results were the same.

Familiar with the results, his Harvard colleagues urged him not to publish his research, telling him it would ruin his career.

Undeterred by the warnings, he published his study and within minutes the hate began to flow. He said he faced a relentless stream of threats and complaints.

“All hell broke loose,” he said, adding that he was forced to live under police protection for more than a month after his study was published.

“I went to the supermarket to buy diapers with the armed guard. He was crazy. He was really crazy,” Fryer said, recalling a time she went shopping for diapers for her seven-day-old daughter.

Later, at the height of the "Me Too" era, Fryer was suspended from Harvard for two years after being accused of engaging in "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature," which he denies.

Former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who at the time was dean of the institution, alleged that Mr. Fryer's conduct "demonstrated a pattern of behavior" that fell short of expectations.

a documentary entitled “How Claudine Gay Canceled Harvard’s Best Black Professor” delved into the circumstances of her suspension and concluded that it was an “ideological purge” for daring to overthrow woke orthodoxies with her contrarian writings on race and policing, as well as race and education. .

One of Fryer's other studies on the black achievement gap found that not racism, but quality teachers and good parenting play a key role.

Recently, Ms. Gay was forced to resign as president of Harvard amid a plagiarism scandal.

Claudine Gay resigns

Ms. Gay, who was Harvard's shortest-serving president, resigned on January 2 after mounting accusations of plagiarism.

Harvard acknowledged that it plagiarized in his dissertation and other articles, although the university said in a Dec. 12 statement that its analysis found “no violation of Harvard's standards for research misconduct” and reaffirmed its confidence that Ms. Gay “is the right leader.” .

Ms. Gay said in a letter that she had made the decision to resign because it had become “clear that it is in Harvard's best interest for me to resign so that our community can navigate this time of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.” ”.

She did not take responsibility for the plagiarism accusations, and despite the resignation, Ms. Gay remains a member of the Harvard faculty.

In addition to accusations of plagiarism, Ms. Gay also faced criticism for a series of alleged anti-Semitic incidents on campus in the wake of Israel's military operation in Gaza after agents of the Hamas terrorist group killed some 1,200 Israelis in border communities. .

Harvard later faced what could be a new plagiarism scandal after the university's chief diversity and inclusion officer was accused of lifting significant portions of her academic work without quotes.

Of The Epoch Times

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