Roland Fryer
Harvard economics professor Roland Fryer was recently named as one of 22 MacArthur Foundation Fellows for 2011.
The fellowships are no-strings-attached grants of $500,000 which recipients use to pursue their own creative, intellectual and professional endeavors.
Fryer’s academic work focuses on illuminating the causes and consequences of economic disparity due to race and inequality in American society, particularly in education.
“I’m still in a bit of shock,” Fryer told the Harvard Gazette. “The feeling that is most prominent at this point is one of gratitude — to the foundation for the fellowship, to my colleagues and to the University for doing what it can to provide an environment for faculty where ideas are our only constraints.”
Roland Fryer received a B.A. (1998) from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Ph.D. (2002) from Pennsylvania State University.
He was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (2003-2006) prior to his appointment in the Department of Economics, where he is currently Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics.
He is also founder and director of the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
