Economist Roland Fryer on Adversity, Race, and Refusing to Conform

friends and guests in conversation tonight for uatx live would you please welcome Barry Weiss and Roland FR I'm so excited to be here and I'm so so thrilled to see so many young faces here it feels like something we've been talking about for such a long time is finally becoming a reality so thank you guys from all of the places that you travel to make it here tonight I'm also thrilled to be up here with Roland frier someone I've wanted to talk to for a long time but has eluded me so I'm thrilled that this gave us the opportunity I'm going to give him a little bit of a more fome introduction Roland frier is one of the most celebrated economists in the world he is the author or or co-author of more than 50 papers I'm sure the number is now much higher but that's what I found online on topics ranging from The Economic Consequences of distinctively black names to racial differences in police shootings a subject that I'm sure some of you have read read his research about at 30 he became the youngest black tenur professor in Harvard's history at 34 he won a MacArthur genius Fellowship followed by a John Bates Clark medal which is given to an economist in America under 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge Roland has some awards whose names I literally cannot pronounce you can look them up online and if you go to his official harvard.edu bio you will see one line at the very bottom that is the most interesting and maybe impressive of all and this is the line before coming to Harvard frier worked at McDonald's drive-thru not corporate and that line is a glimpse into Roland Friar's unlikely story because based on every statistic and stereotype about race and poverty in America he should not have become the things he became and yet he did and so that's the obvious place that I want to start which is before the accolades before the McDonald's drive-through job 1977 June you come into the world in Daytona Beach Florida tell us a little bit about the circumstances of your birth and the family that you were born into first of all thank you I'm I'm a little star struck up here because I've I've been such a Barry fan for so many years and um she doesn't return my emails but she saids you can talk to me on stage so here we are this is profoundly untrue Pursuit Of Truth um yeah I was born in in in in Florida as you say in 1977 and and um my grandmother who's now passed away likes to used to like to say she brought me home from the hospital and uh and we lived in an all black community in in Daytona Beach Florida and I lived there for uh the first part of my youth until we moved actually to Texas so it's nice to be home um but my I you know I grew up in a very weird situation I'll just give you a high level um my grandmother was a school teacher my grandmother was a phenomenal phenomenal human being complicated but phenomenal she was born in 1925 and she played basketball for be cookman College in the uh in the late 40s and she witnessed integration she integrated school she was a school teacher um but she never stepped foot out of this all black uh lower income community in Daytona Beach um I didn't meet my mother until I was in my 20s when I sought her out and my father went to prison when I was 12 years old or so but I had my grandmother and uh on the other side of my family uh they were the largest Distributors of crack cocaine in Central Florida and so I had this grandmother who was telling me there's clear right and wrong in the world and she was an English teacher so she would always correct everything I said which was the most annoying thing possible and I had these other really really cool cousins who were um you know driving cars that had Hydraulics and and they didn't speak in The King's English and I thought that was pretty fun uh and it it created this insulation layer it's weird there are benefits from growing up in a drug family that I could do whatever I wanted and no one said a word and so that's that's kind of a general overview of how I grew up was very strange was growing up in a drug family I know you yourself sold you yourself sold pot at one point and also knockoff purses from the trunk of your car was that like the early inklings of thinking maybe I'm going to become an economist okay I want to correct the record I never sold pot I keep telling people I've never sold any drugs no I've never sold drugs because I saw it sold and and all my cousins who I love dearly that's the thing in the black community maybe in many communities there's this weird there's not really a line there's a or squishy between people who are selling drugs and people who are upstanding citizens who are School teachers and we never judge them for that um in fact I went over their house every Sunday for pancakes every Sunday they were amazing right like I've had the great Fortune of eating in great michelon star restaurants I've never had anything as good as a crack [Laughter] cake try it out but seriously there and so ran frier will not be in charge of making the food at uatx they just need everyone here to know that parent stor until I do it first and you like could we bring him back was something about those cookies it kept me up all night but they were amazing look so so I but the purses yes I did sell D andberg purses out of out of a out of a um out of my car which was not a good idea either but yes I I I um I was really afraid of hard drugs and stuff like that because I saw what happened to all my cousins they all had got 20-year prison sentences when I was a kid and I happened to be very close to their house when the FBI rated and it was 1991 I was 14 years old and it was really scary to see all of them these people that I loved dearly taken away and so no no on the drugs but yes on the purses when you kind of step back and look at the look at your life on a piece of paper absent mother alcoholic father who goes to jail many of your closest relatives sent off to jail for dealing drugs you sort of bouncing around between a grandmother with rules and a family without rules this is not a recipe for a successful life this is not a recipe for human flourishing how did you get out of those circumstances what was sort of the first step out and did you realize it at the time I certainly didn't realize it at the time and and this is not a I wish there were an after school special moment I really do because it would be a lot easier to explain to people um I was an athlete and that's all I cared about really uh I played football from 5 years old all the way through college and that gave me a lot of confidence and maybe a chip on my shoulder I knew I was good at something right and so sometimes we in bad public schools and so you'll never be anything I was like I'm really good on on on Friday nights right I was really good at it I have to admit um and so I I just felt like I was going to be good at something and um I just never really bought into the idea that it was cool to be poor a lot of that was going on oh we're going to hang out oh you want to be hard or this or and people when I was growing up they would say oh you got to you got to go to prison cuz you only there's certain tattoos you can only get in prison you can't get I was like well I don't want them you know I I really I I didn't think going you it may sound crazy now they're like going to prison people were going to prison because they thought it was cool I did not I have high customer service needs and and it just couldn't satisfy it so I I all even when I was there what's weird about life if I'm uh be vulnerable for a minute is I feel like I've never fit in anywhere and I'm sure there are people in the audience who who may share that view when I was back home like I I love hanging out with my family the hard truth is I'm 45 years old and there's not a single person that I grew up with who who's still alive I am the oldest me uh living family member it's weird um there is no home to go back to but when I was there I didn't really I was always too precocious I didn't quite fit in right I would always question things and you know my grandmother would kind of permit it but she was a southern black woman so you get like two questions and she says shut up and and yet you know now at Harvard and I'm certainly closer to you know the folks in Texas than I am uh at Harvard and so it's it's also weird there for me so I there was never a moment where I thought I'm going to get out really there wasn't um but I will say this Barry the embarrassing part is maybe it's not embarrassing I worked so hard once I realized that I wanted to get out I took uh principles of economics course 101 it was taught by the former president of the University who uh was amazing uh and the course was at 8:00 in the morning Mondays and Wednesdays he had office hours at 7 a.m. now I know he was screwing with us but here I am every Monday and Wednesday 700 a.m. and I would go to his office and we would debate everything and we would talk about the economics of welfare the economics of integration the e economics of car price it didn't matter and I fell in love my I have a I've had a love affair with economics since on since the first class and he is the first person in my entire life who told me I was smart right and when he told me he says no he said to me he says kid what are you doing here you should go to Yale or Princeton or someplace like that he says and I'll write recommendation letters for you and and he did and I got into those places as a transfer student but I didn't go because the financial aid offices wanted my parents to sign something that says they're not going to participate and I was too prideful to go find my mother to have to get her to help me to go so I graduated in two and a half years but he told me that and I remember calling my grandmother and says hey this guy says I'm smart but you don't seem to agree and and um that's true story and she says oh yeah you were in one summer program when they said you tested as gifted but I never told you cuz I didn't want you to get a big head now that's a southern grandmother so I think I think that was the moment where I thought maybe I can actually do this stuff but then I realized oh [ __ ] like I am I went to college at at um at 17 oh my goodness I have a lot of catching up to do so I worked really really hard trying to catch up and so I maybe I saw it there but it didn't feel like it I worked like I was desperate when I took my Comm exams as a PhD student I was sleeping in my office every other night I didn't want to take the commute home I was serious and you know professor says what are you doing this is not healthy I said you know what's not healthy is if I don't pass these exams how am I going to eat and he looked at me like I was a alien How could a student in a PhD program worry about eating it's because he had no idea where I came from and so that's the level of desperation um that I tried to keep for a very long time because I I had there's things I wanted to accomplish I'd love for you to stay on that theme for a second just of the alienation or the feeling of being out of Step or a misfit I'll be frank most of the people I know who went into PHD programs or went into Academia are people with the opposite background to you they are people came into the world with a silver spoon how did that impact your career your academic trajectory from college and then in your PhD program did it make you feel like I I I am an alien to the people around me yeah I I would say that it made me feel like this is all going to be over soon so I should enjoy it now um I just didn't think I belonged right like it was a bad fresh episode for many years of my life no seriously because I I didn't know I didn't know a lot right like after my father went to prison when I was in um uh the school said I got have a special program where basically I got went to half of the classes and got out but got full credit I so I don't know a lot of stuff right except for economics I'm pretty good at that but but other than that I don't know a lot of stuff and so when I showed up at Harvard not only did I show up there I went to the Harvard Society of fellows which is the Harvard within Harvard right it is the most pretentious thing I've ever witnessed I'm very serious about that and and it's so the short answer to your question which I'm not going to give but but the short answer is the short answer is there's there's been benefits and cost for being an alien in this in this community but when I showed up there uh the Society of fellows you know we would have sherry on Oliver Wendel Holmes Sherry table you're talking about a kid from the hood dude like I I and so and I'm a truth tell and I don't know how not to tell the I learned to be better at it but like I took one drink I said this disgusting and they were like well it's Oliver I said who I don't know who Oliver is but he got this drink right here ain't right and I'm serious and they were like ha night like oh my gosh he's so irreverent I was like I don't I'm not trying to be right I'm just being myself and and they would sit at dinner and they say I can't express myself in English do you mind if I speak Greek no one likes that guy right I mean like that guy has no friends and so I would I just rejected it all I said I'm not gonna I'm not going to do that I'm not going to I can't play that game I'm so far away from that that I can't play so I'm gonna play my game watch this and so I said' look actually okay let me back up the truth is I went home and I read Emily post cuz I wanted to fit in how did you know to read Emily post cuz I asked someone what the hell do you read to hang out at the Society of fellows and they said you need etiquette classes and I said well what are those and I along some path figured out Emily post and I read the whole thing and then I went to dinner and realized no one was doing what Emily posted so I said maybe they don't know either started to build confidence um and but I would you know it's it's helpful not to know it's helpful sometimes to be naive right I thought we were really going after truth so that's what I went after um I thought when people said they really wanted to help people who look like me in the inner cities I really thought that was a real thing I didn't think I did I mean I now know that they were just joking with me but but back then I thought they were saying the truth so I went after that right you were there for the sincere reasons you didn't realize that a lot of people around you were there to for Prestige or for for for ulterior motives there was no Prestige for me in my community right when I was I had an offer at Harvard and MIT and I told my grandmother and she said well we got d right up the street I don't understand why you would care about MIT I'm serious right like no one no one in my community is wearing you know my sons at Harvard t-shirts right like I mean it's not that they don't care she was proud yes of course she was proud she got that but when I told my grandma that I had a office at Harvard she asked me do do you know the janitors and I said no ma'am I don't and she said well I'm going to call tomorrow and I want you to know their names those are the kinds of things that my grandmother gave Credence to those are the kinds of things she cared about all my research she thought was silly truly she thought it was like education's good for black kids she's like they pay you for that [ __ ] I mean like it's just [Laughter] so you said something in an interview that stuck with me here's what you said my father screwed me over so bad that he made my emotions like a lever I learned how to turn them off and on and that's what's needed when you study race say a little bit more about that and let's use that as a way to talk about the kind of research you do which I think is only possible for someone who didn't know the rules yeah that is true I I um I was on a mission to uh to make life better for the people that I left behind I had a lot of guilt a lot of guilt I felt like my friends in school were smarter than me they made certainly made better grades um and so why did I get chosen to be here what are my responsibilities that kind of stuff um and I cared so much about it that that I was unwilling and am unwilling to lie to the people back home about what they need so early in my career yes it was like a lever I just didn't care I wasn't being brave I was being dumb I just didn't know I just was I was going straight ahead it's not like I sat there with some master plan was like here's what I'm going to do I'm going to architect my career no I went one by one and I would study anything and I was Fearless right I wrote a paper on the clus clan my Grandma thought I was crazy I remember she called she said what are you doing I said I'm sitting in my office looking at some Clan stuff I'll never forget I'll never forget my grandmother said boy you crazy she said I bet there are people in your department who are in the clan I thought she was crazy but I just didn't know anybody so I I I because I just didn't have any emotion about it I was just after truth I I was sitting in the Society of fellows who were people who were at the very Pinnacle of when we were doing String Theory it was not personal there was just something there and then you start to say look if you really want to help right and if you've ever lived in a black neighborhood you realize we disagree there are a lot of people that are very conservative and very Progressive we actually disagree maybe not in front of y'all but we disagree and so it wasn't again it wasn't uh remarkable that you would go in and try to pursue the truth and whether that truth said that um we need to have more intact families or we need to have more government support who cares we were we were trying to solve a problem but one of one of your earliest studies was on the economics of acting white how do you get to that as a topic and and what did what did that study reveal yeah um students often ask me how do you come up with these topics and I say I live yeah right and so um we had a very integrated uh High School in Texas and uh it was integrated on paper but it wasn't integrated in practice all the black kids hung together all the white kids hung together and the only place we met with any agreement was on the football field on Friday nights and um I will admit I was one of the people holding the racial line telling people what was black and what was not so you know there were just certain things you couldn't do in my opinion if you were black right so you had to do certain things so I held that line and the way I give us an example let me see you can't wear shorts in the winter for example if you're black that doesn't work out um it's amazing Cambridge gets 50 degrees and everyone wears shorts I'm like what are you people doing um and you can only listen to certain music that's changed now but you know back in the 90s there was a certain type of music that only people could listen to things like that um and I was in graduate school debating with people in Barber Shop about this and I said well I don't know I just don't know how it works out like I don't you know we've got these Concepts in economics called equilibrium and I just don't understand how it works and the people in the barber shop just started laughing at me they thought this was the dumbest thing in the world right they were like you can't study that ha I did um so I wrote a paper I wrote two of them one was a theor theory about it uh which I'll spare you uh and then I wrote an empirical paper which tried to understand the relationship between popularity and grades in different races and what we found was that popularity increases with grades up to about a 3 five for the black for black kids and then it actually sharply declines and that's what we were talking about we were trying to understand whether or not there was an academic penalty for seemingly doing really well in school a social penalty social penalty okay when you came on my radar it was for a paper that you wrote in 2016 here was the title of it an empirical analysis of racial differences in Police use of force maybe there's been a more controversial paper since then I would argue it's probably the most controversial of your career so far tell us about that study and you you've called the results the most surprising of your career why is that can we change the language of controversy I mean do you mean interesting people are always like you're so controversial I don't want to be right like I'm just showing you the data the data are telling you a weird story that's not my fault I'd like some nice popular data it just didn't work out that way um look I saw what was going on with Michael Brown and um some of the early um viral videos of police violence I wanted to do something but protesting is just not my jam I'm not saying that people shouldn't protest go for it but seemed hot outside I just didn't want to do it and so um I thought I want to do something um and only thing I know how to do is I'm one of the the world's biggest data nerds so I said this is going to be the easiest paper I ever write I'm going to go get some data I'm going to go show that the police are biased finally people are going to like me and my grandmother's going to go you showed that the police don't like black people really what are you doing up there right like this was this was I had it all laid out and then I had dinner with a a colleague of mine and I was telling him about my plan and he says you know Roland um when you work on schools and other stuff like that you really just are in the schools and so it's weird for me strange that you would just download police data and not understand more about the police he says I wonder what the police are maximizing a very econ kind of thing to ask I wonder what the police are maximizing and it dawned on me in that moment I didn't know nor did I think I cared so I said okay fine I didn't give him Credit in the moment but I laughed and said said you know what I'm going to do I'm going to go figure out what police maximize so I set up ride alongs in Camden Philadelphia Houston some places in Massachusetts to ride along with the police now back to 1991 I don't like the police very much I don't what had been your experience with the police I had been roughed up by the police I've had guns pulled on me mind you they pulled me over and I decided it would be a good idea to get out of the car and walk away [Music] the details are important probably but in any event they I didn't like their customer service and so um I just didn't like police they came they took half my family away granted they were selling a lot of drugs but again not the greatest customer service so I was biased against the police I'm not that's obvious I went and um um I don't think I've received a better education since my grandmother taught me to read it's a hard job and I know that sounds obvious sitting on the stage it's a really hard job uh I am a terrible police officer uh after 4 hours everyone looked like a criminal to me I don't know if I I don't know if I was hangry I don't know what it was but I'm telling you I am serious they were like you could never be a cop because I was like hey let's pull over that kid's got a basketball I don't like it I I participated in in these weapons training thing not real weapons relax but like um these weapons trainings where there's simulations and some guy like I'm in a building the guy walks out he's got a baby I shoot the guy right in the head and they're like what was about the baby I said sorry I didn't see the baby I was a bad police officer but what I really did serious I I um I realized the job is really hard it was the end of a 12-hour shift in Camden and we get a call for a potential overdose in a row house it's an abandoned building we bust in uh a person dies within 6 feet of me and shook me up a little bit and so I looked at the guys I was with and I said yo how about beers on me and they said what do you mean beers are on you I said I don't know I don't know how to say it in do you want me to speak in Greek I mean I don't know it's uh beers are on me we should leave here let the paramedics take over we should go and they said we got to go back to work and I said but we just saw somebody die and the police chief overheard me and he he was incredulous he says Roland if I gave everybody a break every time someone died I wouldn't no one would cover the shifts and I was like wow it is a hard job and so through these experiences long story short I collected a lot of data and those experiences helped me understand what types of data to collect um we collected millions of observations on uh everyday use of force that wasn't lethal we collected thousands of observations on lethal force and the key question I alluded to it earlier in a bit of a joke but the key question is not just um this arbitrary silly snapshots that some journalists not named Barry do a lot which is black people are 133% of the population and they are 50% of the police shootings I'm sorry about that but I don't know what that has to do with the question right and and it it was in this moment in 2016 that I realized people lose their minds when they don't like the result right and so what my paper showed you'll see tomorrow uh like some of you uh was that yes we saw some bias in the lowlevel uses of force every day pushing up against cars and things like that people sent to like that result but we didn't find any um uh racial bias and police shootings now that was really surprising to me because I expected to see it the little known fact is I had eight full-time Ras that it took to do this over nearly a year when I found the surprising result I hired eight fresh ones and redid it to make sure they came up with the same exact answer and I thought it was robust and I went to go give it and my God all hell broke loose tell tell us about that what was the re I mean well your former paper published The Thing uh published a report about it and it was a 104 page dense academic economics paper with 150 page appendix okay it was posted for four minutes when I got my first email this is full of [ __ ] doesn't make any sense and I wrote back how' you read it that fast that's amazing you are a genius people lost their minds I mean it was like colleagues of mine were going well I don't believe these results he's using regressions I'm like well what the hell else we been using I mean we've been using them for ever that's what you use and I had colleagues take me into to the side and say don't publish this you'll ruin your career I said what are you talking about I said' what's wrong with it do you believe the first part yes do you believe the second part well it's the issue is they just don't fit together we like the first one but you should publish the second one another time I said let me ask this if the second part about the police shootings this is a literal conversation I said to them if the second part uh showed bias do you think I would should publish it then and they say yeah then it would make sense and I said I guarantee you I'll publish it we'll see what happens so it was it was you know I I lived under under um police protection for about 30 or 40 days I had a 7day old daughter at the time I remember going and shopping for cuz you know when you have a newborn you think you have enough diapers you don't so I I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with the armed guard it was crazy it was really truly crazy um and uh yeah it was it was a really phenomenal experience there are a lot of people many people and this has been a realization for me over the past few years of my own life who faced with that exact decision point would make the opposite choice I think the majority of people actually would make the opposite choice they would think I'm going to preserve my career my professional status my Prestige you were the golden I mean you were a Golden Boy at that point I'm going to preserve my popularity my ability to get along with my colleagues someone nice to sit next to me in the cafeteria like every incentive to use an economics term would be pushing you to make that choice what is it inside of you what can everyone here learn about what allowed you to make the opposite choice to make the choice that would force you to suffer all of the consequences you would come to suffer some a direct result and some adjacent to it I don't covet what they covet and I tell my undergraduates every year in the final lecture of my undergraduate classes each one of them the key to Harvard is get a great education without letting this P Place change you it's really important it can be corrupting so not every incentive was pushing in that direction because every day I have to look myself in the mirror and say what are you here for what did you leave behind I did not grow up wanting to go to Harvard I didn't I really didn't um I wanted to do something and I like many others in here I want to acknowledge that have suffered a lot of losses in my life my grandmother's no longer here my father is dead I don't know where my mother is I have they're all gone every single cousin is gone my favorite cousin when he the day he got released out of prison after 25 years someone walked walked up behind him and shot him directly in the head so I have to make this journey worth it I am here because I want to solve problems I am here because I have seen so much talent in these neighborhoods and I know they know [ __ ] when they see it so I'm not going to lie to them I wouldn't be able to show my face in these places if I told lies to them like oh I hid this result from you the thing about it is if you do a result what has happened with the actual police departments is that because they actually believe the results and they're willing to reform on the lower level uses of force because someone told the truth about the others and you know it's The Importance of Being thought of someone of being an actual truth teller is so so very important maybe not in the moment um but I don't I didn't go to Harvard to have shardon a at 10:30 in the morning I just don't want to it's not my thing I'm and it's okay if it's someone else's thing it's just not my thing um I came here came there I went there to make a difference truly I know that sounds naive to many of you but I as I tell my students remember when you came to Harvard you had lofty dreams of change in the world it wasn't downside risk protection right everybody everybody I know who I've seen walk through that those Ivy doors rocks the boat until they get in the boat and then they say steady now I rocked the boat until I got in the boat and I said let's see how fast we can go and I fallen out the boat got run over by the boat it's it is what it is but you got to be for something right and so I I I mean I actually don't understand those other people I don't know what they're maximizing let's talk about [Applause] yes let's talk about getting um I don't know if you can get run over by a boat but falling out of the boat um so you write this paper publish it your daughter's 7 days old you've police protection it's a dumpster fire probably that's how you're describing it and then in 2017 Harvard opens this investigation into allegations from a former assistant who alleged sexual harassment in your communication ultimately you're suspended for 2 years without pay that ended in 2021 I wondered if you wanted to reflect on any of that at all and I think the thing I'm personally most curious about is first of all do you think that the thought crime of your research put a particular Target on your back and the second is there's been so many examples like this how did you maintain I don't know what other word to use other than your sanity um in a moment where I imagine you felt like the the world had been turned upside down yeah there's a lot there so you may have to remind me um I want to go back one one step and then we'll go to 2017 we talked about the tough Parts about 2016 which were you know police protection and all that but here's the cool part I received thousands of emails there was a time in my life during that period where I would say uh hello to my wife and my newborn and I had a three or four year old at the time and then I would go up to my office and literally return emails nonstop for nine or 10 hours because yes there was a lot of um a lot of the emails were nasty from both sides I I really it was it pissed off nearly everybody but there were a lot of them that were inquisitive a woman from Kansas saying thank you for putting data in this because I I'm watching what's going on on TV and I don't know what to make of it can you help me understand um and and one of the my secret obsessions which I will tell you but don't tell anybody is to force people to have civil discourse I spend hours doing it someone will say to me someone the other day said to me that thing you wrote in the journal that was such dumbassery I didn't know that was a word and blah blah blah blah blah he went on and I said to him thanks for the note I was just saying that uh top talent should rise to the top could you explain to me your side of things so we go back and forth 20 emails in the end he says this has just been the greatest conversation in all seriousness I've done this thousands of times I estimate my I call them turning them my turnover rate is about 80% people want civil discourse and so that's the great part about what came out is that we I I was able to be a teacher we have data we we can educate if we can bring the temperature down we can actually talk to each other okay 2017 um you know one of the and going from Daytona to Texas to to Harvard um there are a lot of things I knew to watch out for just you know instinctively like don't beat anybody up you know uh cu the way you handle disputes at Harvard is very different because people were like whisper campaigns oh I heard he did this and I was like and I used to wonder why can't we just go out by the bike racks and finish it you know I just didn't so I never got in a fight that was good at Harvard so far um what I didn't understand and now many of you will say it's not possible for you not to understand this and you are entitled to your opinion but I'm telling you what honestly I believe I did not understand this thing called power dynamics true um because I would never do it right like Barry's way more fancy and famous than me but like if she says something that's not funny I'm not going to laugh to appease her it's not what I would do um and so I honestly thought um that I was creating a space for people to do whatever they wanted to let creativity rain that means they could talk about what they wanted to talk about uh they could do whatever they wanted to do and it at that time and unfortunately still now it's not in my personality to go over to two people who seem to be enjoying a um inappropriate conversation to go over them to them and say I don't think that's appropriate for the office I don't mean to make that tone but that's what's in my head um and so I didn't shut those kinds of conversations down uh and and I I thought this was a good thing I honestly did and I participated in a lot of jokes okay and I and people were laughing and not just like haahaha but like falling on the floor laughing and um and so it was a huge surprise to me that after a labor dispute um that someone would say that these conversations um really damaged me and and caused me harm and I can tell you that if anything I said caus someone Earnest harm my God I have apologized over and over again for that I mean I it's not obviously I would never I wouldn't do that um and so I didn't I didn't realize at the time that there was a thing called power dynamics and all that and so yes I I I made jokes that uh I I it was shown that I made six jokes um that were really terrible but I wanted I want people to know there were like jokes where like it's like here's the equivalent Barry and I talking about someone on the street okay like hey that person who walks by they look funny haha right and we would both laugh and we' move on um it wasn't like joking about the people I mean the way the New York Times wrote about it you'd think I cornered people in their office and held him down like knock knock say who's there say it it's not what I did how how'd you get through it many people would have gone through that experience and said bye I'm leaving Harvard I'm going to go into private Equity I went back to to Harvard so that everyone knows here and everywhere else that I could um because there was a lot of obus of facts and things like that so um that was important to me people reached out to me at the time a few and said to me oh my God this is must be really really hard it wasn't it was really really annoying growing up without a mother is hard and I'm never going to forget the difference right like one of the promises I've made to myself is I will never ever worry about the types of things that middle class people worry about if my drapes don't get here on look I I got big customer service needs to trust me like okay but if my drapes don't get there on time from France because the barge gets held up it's okay it's okay right because I remember what it was like to go to bed hungry I vividly remember what it was like to go to bed so scared I know what gunshots sound like at night I remember having to get up making the decision at night at eight or 9 years old do you pee in the bed or are you brave enough to walk to the bathroom that's hard not people that I didn't like anyway not wanting to talk to me anymore and so I had a little bit I liit of a chip on my shoulder during the time right and I know I'm not supposed to say this but yes there's a lot people who I thought were the there was one hard part which is I had a lot of people in the academy who I considered family because I didn't really have mine wasn't there and those people cut out still haven't talked to them some of them have come back and say Hey you know we can be friends again and I said no we can't but um I did things wrong um it wasn't because it was an evil heart it was because I was ignorant um you know the day I heard about this thing called power dynamics I literally started taking Executive coaching literally that day um and I would argued with the executive coach I said what do you mean power why would anyone laugh if it's not funny I mean we really went at it I learned a lot um and so I I did things wrong I have apologize for those things but it wasn't what you know it wasn't it it it it wasn't more than um jokes among people that I thought we were friends I mean we these people had Thanksgiving dinner at my house I I thought we could tell jokes you know and and I I I should have known better one of the details in this story is that you were suspended by a woman who I had never heard of until recently her name is Claudine gay and she said this in a letter to the economics Department at the time Professor frier exhibited a pattern of behavior that failed to meet the expectations of conduct within our community and was harmful to the well-being of its members the totality of these behaviors is a clear violation of institutional norms and a betrayal of trust of the Harvard community so I guess I want to ask do you believe in [Applause] karma I hear it's a [ __ ] and also does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute bullying and harassment yes or no a th% um I think we're going to maybe take some questions from the audience here maybe let's bring the house lights up a little bit so we can see your faces um and then then I'll ask Roland some questions later um raise your hand and definitely biased toward people who are prospective students yeah let's go to a I mean my wife is in the front row and is Raising her hand so does hold on you need a microphone do you think that what happened in 2017 was a sort of attempt at punishing you for what you did in 2016 the research like do you connect those I I honestly haven't thought too hard about that I I did a lot of things that Harvard people didn't like um I broke a lot of glass uh um I'm not a company dude I'm just not I'm very clear about what my mission is I am put on this Earth to develop the truth about why we're losing so much talent and disadvantaged neighborhoods in the around the world that's what I'm here for I'm not here for faculty meetings I'm not here to to hang out um and so I'll admit like I you know I when you give a big donation to a a university they take administrative overhead I thought that was dumb why would I I got this person to give a million dollars why would you get 20% that's that sounds like the kind of business my cousins ran I don't I don't agree with that right and so I would find and help them find ways where they could pay less so that I could give more to the inner cities um I paid kids to learn it's okay now but in 2007 this was crazy tell tell us what you mean paying kins to I I went around in four or five different cities spent 10 million doll in inner cities um giving kids Financial incentives to do better in school did it work yes right uh a lot of adults didn't like it I never met a kid who didn't think it was brilliant we also opened up bank accounts for him and was a whole thing but you know during that time Harvard asked to take their names off the checks because they didn't want to be associated with the research right I you know people would ask me Rand why don't you spend more time with our graduate students and I would say I was young and maybe these were the dumb things to say but I think you got to add all this up and just say people kind of thought I was an [ __ ] you know and I can understand it but you know I would say but look if I don't give them comments on their paper there's 10 other people waiting here what about the kids in these neighborhoods I'm the only one going there from this department you want to swap I'm happy to give comments and you can go there and so I I can understand why that rubbed people the wrong way and I also don't tolerate foolishness at all okay and so you can't put me on a task force where we're going to spend the semester talking about the new name for black people I don't want to do it right you go to my neighborhood and call someone bipac they'll punch you in the face no one care I care about the real issues right you know what's offensive being unemployed and so I have had that attit to throughout my career I don't plan on getting rid of it because I want to make sure we focus on the real issues and I believe sometimes in universities we F we start to focus internally on the things that will but it's not helping the people that we said we came there to help right over here and if you can introduce yourself say where you're from yeah of course so hi my name is sa Alo I'm uh from Texas but I live here in Austin currently I I wanted to first thank you both for coming out I have been aware of both of y'all for a while now and it's cool to see y'all in person um but I guess um my question has to do with your background with your grandmother um in one of my classes recently uh we've talked a lot about childhood trauma and adversity and one of the topics that we've touched on is how uh solid Role Models early in life particularly those that provide equal parts support but also like tough love um can help reduce the impact of uh of of traumatic experiences particularly lack of supports in other areas so with that in mind I'm curious whether you feel like your success to some degree relates to the support that your grandmother gave you um and especially in her not being too snowplow but also not too um willy-nilly yeah it's a great question I I look I my my grandmother gives a lot of credit um um I when I lived with her I didn't there was nothing I needed needed I didn't know I really didn't know we didn't have money until I got to Harvard and someone was like you didn't have a lot of money My grandmother used to do these little games right she would she would be she would cook a pot of beans which I hated but she would put one of a different type of bean somewhere in the pot cuz she knew I was really competitive and she'd be like I bet you can't find the green bean in this bowl of black beans I was like I can't um and she was just really she was an educator um we disagreed all the time our views of America were extremely different but she was uh a rock a uh and um you know and I also think that I have just been incredibly you know it's in a format like this you can't tell everything but um I've just been so incredibly fortunate um that people spent way more time with me than they were supposed to and I don't know what about me makes people think I'm a project but I'll take it um you know Glenn L when I was a first year graduate student you know didn't make me come to office hours or what ever he was at a different University he would invite me to his cabin and we would take 4H hour walks hikes in the wood I didn't even know hiking was walking in the wood it's so weird like he was like let's go hiking are we hiking yet like I didn't know what that was but I was fascinated I was called my grandmother you know I hiked it's very similar to walking um but see I'm never going to lose that I don't want okay but but he would take me and he would prove things in the air and we would sit there for 4 hours and I would rush back and try to write them all down and he was amazing Steve levit would would spend I'm not talking about see now at most universities you go see a professor they talk to you for 20 minutes 30 if you're lucky Steve levit would come to my office for eight hours and we would sit at a computer terminal and watch the data come out and he would question me about what was coming out and what was next he used to call me at 5:00 in the morning on his drivein and he' ask every morning he would ask hey Roland he'd be blasting music who's this rapper I was like I don't know Gary Becker right Jim Heck all these greats took time to develop me and so yes my grandmother has been phenomenal and and she gave me the the structure when I was a kid to that I needed or else I would have been homeless man but but I am just so grateful um uh to all the people who I don't I don't I'm not saying it lightly I'm not trying to be weird about it but but so I can't to lifee for me so many people spent ridiculous hours with me um helping me to become a real Economist right here hi my name is Anna Grace I'm from Idaho so you mentioned that you tell your undergrads not to let Harvard change them so I'm curious what it is you see about this group of kids that comes in with all this spark and desire to change the world and then they get brought together and they lose that what do you think that is I think it's something about they realize how much they have to lose um when this stuff happened to me in 2017 I've got one friend of mine from seventh grade um uh who I'm still in contact with and uh I reached out to him just to have a person that has known me for so long and his response was well you've been playing with house money for a while and I was like yeah you right I have been playing with house money for a while and and and and and uh many students don't have that view right and so I think it's you realize how much there is to lose and and I think the institution does does part of that to help them understand that whoa whoa whoa don't don't don't risk it now take these very um articulated steps so that you don't encourage risk I wear failure like a badge of honor I really do and I'm sure I'm going to keep failing I'm going to keep trying but um what I what I mean when I tell that to my students is is exactly what you just described it's really about tapping into that energy source um and the purity of the reason that you you you came to this campus great question yeah great question right here yeah the young man right there yeah please do you think that you always would have ended up in this sort of industry and profession that you are now if you had had a more present mother and father in your life or is there absence a factor in who you are today yeah I think if I had a mom and dad I think I'd be working at Applebees pretty much um no I I don't know I I don't know I really don't know um I wouldn't have been so desperate you know my two daughters they don't work hard they're like seven one of them's 11 I told my 11-year-old the other I was like when I was your age you know I was basically living on my own she's like pass the briis [Laughter] dad is this from the part of France I like it um you know I think that I often think that if I had um more of a safety N Net I would have taken even more risk right like one of the reasons I became a professor was because of tenure because everyone in my life who had some success I saw it taken away from them granted some of it was illegal but that's not important um and so I was really worried about that um I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to be an entrepreneur ever but if I had a safety net maybe probably right I actually like the Arts um during my two years away from Harvard I went and did standup comedy and I loved it and I thought I would have done this had I had parents right because I would have been able to take risk I think who knows you know my view is for my own daughters one day they're going to come to me and be like I want to be art history and I'll be like wow I was a great [Laughter] parent one of the things I've been wanting to ask you so obviously the Claudine gay stuff is part of this enormous upheaval happening in Higher Education Without which I don't think uatx would have been found in when it was one of the parts of that debate is about Dei um I've written about the need to end Dei John Ha was sort of going viral earlier on Twitter today for saying something similar you and I think somewhat disagree on that you had an oped recently in the Wall Street Journal uh in which you said I worry that the desire to take down Dei in its entirety will make successes like mine harder even impossible to realize so I've wanted to ask you like what does good de EI look like and how will we know when we're seeing it where do we disagree well I think you're saying I think I'm saying it's hard for me to imagine a good version of a Dei bureaucracy not that diversity or equity and inclusion as virtues are bad I think they're very good at least if e Equity means equality of opportunity um if it's equality of outcome I don't think that's a fair measure of success or Justice um so it's just hard for me to imagine reforming a current bureaucracy that to me seems to have a kind of manic world view and put pit students against each other in a kind of zero some game for victimhood status now that doesn't mean that like my life has benefited because of efforts to make the world more inclusive obviously so yeah but I'm I'm not talking about either of those Dimensions okay what I really mean is can we get the people with the most innate talent to have opportunities that's what I really mean so you know often people ask me to write a letter of recommendation for their four-year-old for a private school Johnny breaks graham crackers brilliantly I mean what am I supposed to write and so I uh I I bet we would both agree that a 4-year-old from a rich family doesn't deserve to go to a better preschool than a 4-year-old from a middle class family what has that four-year-old merited to get into a better school so what I'm saying is is that I am after truly Talent identification like I think that Admissions and hiring and all those things really are about trying to find who's going to be the most most successful at the job and often or at least sometimes that is not the person with the best current resume I believe that the Delta the difference that I'm willing to bump someone up gets a lot smaller as they age so for a four-year-old I'm willing to make pretty large concessions to make sure that four-year-olds from or or to four-year-olds from every neighborhood can go to really great schools cuz I don't think you've married anything at four years old when it gets to high school i' I'd do less because you have had a chance to show and we've had data on your true progression and so for me it really is about how can you use data to identify real talent not current accomplishments sometimes they're correlated and sometimes they're not so much and so that's what I think all this discussion is missing right like okay I didn't have the world's greatest SAT scores you can probably have figured that out by now right um but I had talent and so it would have been great if there were a system that would have been able to say given the s look what he had to overcome to get those SAT scores why would I accept someone over him with slightly higher SAT scores who had tutors every day that would tell me that that person's a native ability Is Not Great relative to this kid who basically did it with all these headwinds right and the issue with the way it's practi now what I'm describing this is not the way it's practiced now but the way it's practiced now is that you end up with uh often times lower scores with people who had a lot of opportunities that's also not consistent with Talent identification if my daughters and I've told them this if my daughters need help when they get ready to apply for college it is not because anything was held against them it's just cuz they suck and it's okay to suck I'll love them the same but they have had every opportunity I can dream about everything like oh you know kid accidentally lifts a leg up we're like oh are you into ballet we'll sign you up for that too like I mean we're into everything everything it's I mean we violin I mean these are the worst concerts anyone's ever heard but we go this is great this is the worst thing it's great right and and and so you but seriously you see this that that there's no if someone has had that level of resource and they can't get the bar they just don't get the bar in my under my view but if they come from the inner city Atlanta and they're just beneath a bar where everyone else has had tutors you might want to look at that and go there might be something really in that student because if we actually give them the things that these other kids have had they might have another gear so when I got to college and got into that class it was the first time in my life I could actually concentrate without all the drama around me right and I was like wait wait wait you GNA and then I got an an academic scholarship I said you going to pay me to read this is the easiest thing in the world and I I my own room and there's no one yelling in the other room this is easy but you got to look for that and and so if it's about Talent optimization identifying developing retaining Talent then I'm that's my version of what Dei looks like and and and the the D part is on it's end dimensional right it's not just about race or gender or the state you live in um it is about who you are and how much talent is lurking beneath and how much do we think you'd actually benefit in a value ad sense from being um a part of our University or our preschool or what whatever it may be yeah last question make it let's let's get these two young women right here and R answer both of them thank you so much I didn't actually expect you to see me um so bear with me I I I I've had this question kind of burning and bubbling for a while you said why are we losing so much talent and disadvantaged communities and then you talked about can we get the people with the most inate talent to rise to the top talent identification how can you use real data to identify real talent and then finally the real like kind of gut-wrenching moment this is when you can really speak to WB de boy he says you know there's a lot of talent in these communities the top talent rise to the top I'm thinking of The Talented 10th but take that thought bubble do you need Strife do you need desperation do you need that like hunger Hunger yeah but but a little bit more like sorry I'm going to be one of those people in your uh fellows like let's look at hessed let's look at like all of Greek tragedy they need that actual Strife that chaos that like moves them do I need that in order to be become that talented thing that that thing that brings Beauty truth goodness to the world I actually have to go through Strife to get there no great it's a i great last question I don't know the answer to that I have met really really brilliant people who didn't go through that um and I'm hopeful for my daughter's sake that uh that they don't have to go through that to also do brilliant things if so then I have to start waking them up in the morning just wake up you know something like that um I have met I think that it's I don't know what creates it but there is a temperament there is a set of characteristics traits beliefs I've seen you know my good friend Steve levit grew up with a doct dad you know in in Minnesota that dude worked hard he cared about these questions um I had a lot more in common with him than I did uh a lot of my colleagues so I've seen it in all up the Spectrum and one of the things that uh I find so amazing just about the world we live in is that that thing inside you that you're describing I've seen it amongst some kids in the poorest areas in our country I call it the I used to call it the dog in you do you have the dog in you I've seen it in precocious kids who are faculty kids who just have this thing in them I've seen it in Africa I've seen it in Europe I've seen it in the French suburbs where these schools are supposed to be bad you meet some kid and you can just feel they got that thing in them I don't know where it comes from I don't you you ask a brilliant question does it have to come from tragedy uh and I don't have the empirical knowledge to know maybe maybe it's 20% higher um but but I've seen it across the globe and it's the thing I'm attracted to and it's the thing that I think earlier in my career attracted people to me I think they thought there's something crazy about this kid he's willing to stay up all night and work um and before we close I just want to say one last thing to to the students here um this is an amazing opportunity right um I you know been tangentially just on the Sidelines witnessing what's happening at uh uatx and it's a phenomenal phenomenal opportunity um I have a student in my one of my classes who have gone through one of the uh forbidden courses and told me it was one of the best experiences they've ever had because there was no questioning about uh the other person's um morals or their their their attitude just because they were asking questions didn't mean they were odd they could just get down to understanding so I think this is going to be a phenomenal phenomenal um opportunity and and I'll just leave you with the same thing I tell my students at Harvard which is um remember why you came here um you can actually change the world I get up every morning and believe that today is going to be the day you can actually change the world and people are going to say things to you like maybe even your parents who are here with you they're going to say you can't say stuff like that or be careful doing that ignore them I'm going to wear my drama with my colleagues like a badge of honor no one that I respect who's actually changed the world did it with a golden Road not one go back and look at history well Nile's better that than I am but go back and look at history everyone who has done something big has suffered in some way for trying to do something that people thought was crazy that's okay you are going to have to figure out during your time here how to strike the balance between listening and not listening and it is harder than you might imagine because some advice should be listened to and a lot of it should not I was really fortunate that I had a a a mentor of mine tell me about two years at Harvard in he said to me don't listen to me anymore follow your gut from here on out and you're going to have to figure out when that time is for you but I'm I'm so happy you're here and if there's anything that that I can do here is an open invitation for all the students you can contact me his office hours are at 7 [Laughter] a.m. seriously let me know you are not alone if you want to change the world you will never be alone you can choose not to contest fine you are never alone I felt so alone in this Pursuit for so long you are not alone right one last thing Jeff Canada he was CEO of Harlem Children Z it's always been good to me I love Jeff Canada we disagree about a lot of stuff but I love love love the man I think he's an American hero there's a period in my life where everything I did every day people told me it was wrong I tried to reform schools in Houston and people picketed me outside my house and said Rolland frier is the worst thing for black people since the Tuskegee experiments and during my down days I would call Jeff Canada and I'd say hey Jeff what color is the sky and he'd say it's blue and I'd say thank you and I'd hang up because sometimes when you're trying to change the world you look up to the sky and you see this beautiful blue sky and everybody in your life says ohoo that's a nice shade of purple and you're like why don't you see what I see stay strong during those times I earnestly this is not [ __ ] I don't do that I'm earnestly here school has my email contact me you are not alone I want you to change the world the world needs you to change it and you're at the right place to get the good start to do so thank you for having us [Applause]

Channel: University of Austin

Views: 156,936

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Id: rHDhj7Bua1Q

Length: 77min 17sec (4637 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024