Roland Fryer on the Cost of Telling the Truth

0:00Coleman Hughes:Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Roland Fryer. Roland is a professor of economics at Harvard University and an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He's known for his groundbreaking empirical work on racial inequality, education, policing, and social policy. He received the 2015 John Bates Clark Medal and at age 30 became the youngest African American to receive tenure at Harvard. Roland is a fearless truth-teller. His research on crime, policing, and racial inequality is fascinating and important, and I've cited him many times on this podcast.

0:39Coleman Hughes:But his research is also out of step with progressive orthodoxies. And because of that, he's had to show a considerable amount of courage and sometimes had to suffer unpleasant consequences just to publish his research. Now, Roland, along with Bill Ackman, has created a$1 million prize for other fearless truth-tellers. It's called the Carib Prize, and in the second half of our discussion today, Roland explains why this prize is so necessary. In the first half of our talk, I ask Roland his thoughts about the Jason Arde scandal, about which Roland wrote a fantastic op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

1:19So without further ado, Roland Fryer.

1:31Coleman Hughes:Okay, Roland Fryer, thanks so much for coming back on my show. It's always good to be here, Coleman. So I had you on, I don't know, maybe a year or two ago. We went into your whole life story, how it is that you became a Harvard professor. You know, you have one of those stories that in a different world would be, you know, a Hollywood hoop dreams turned Harvard econ professor biopic. But, you know, in the in the current environment, which elevates certain stories over others, it's it's lesser known than it should be. And I hope it becomes better known. You had a really good piece recently in The Wall Street Journal.

2:13Coleman Hughes:You've been writing a lot for the Wall Street Journal, right? Are you a columnist there? Yes. Every two weeks I read. Every two weeks, yeah. So it's a must-read every two weeks. And we're going to talk about some of the recent ones, and there's a lot to talk about. But let's start with Jason Arday. I think probably my whole audience will be familiar with the basic outline of the Arday story if you've been living under a rock. this man, the late deceased now Jason Arday he invented massive swaths of his life story massive athletic feats running 600 miles in 6 days he didn't speak until he was 11, that was the story people were told, he didn't read until he was 18 and yet did PhD level work by 30, all of this was invented or greatly exaggerated at minimum and presented to everyone from Cambridge to BBC journalists who took it down smooth without skepticism, at least not without skepticism that they said out loud, and allowed this guy to rise to the highest ranks one can in academia.

3:27Coleman Hughes:He was the youngest ever black professor, professor of sociology, but youngest ever black professor, period, I believe, at Cambridge. And all of this set him up for a psychological crash when it came out that he was a fraud. And it's very sad to see that he, I think it's confirmed now that he took his own life. I don't know if that's 100%, but it's assumed. And this, you know, there's so many lessons to draw from this. and there's to me it should go without saying that I never celebrate that somebody died even if they did bad things you know when they were alive or if they did dishonest things but you know what occurred to me immediately was the skepticism that these Cambridge professors didn't show the BBC journalists when they see this black man that has a story about coming from very little and making it all the way to the top.

4:30Coleman Hughes:It's clear they had such a hunger for this sort of story. They wanted to believe so bad that they didn't, they turned off their skeptical minds. And it occurred to me, how many brilliant black academics do we already have who have such stories that end up with the wrong conclusions or the wrong politics or not towing the line that a black intellectual is supposed to in progressive spaces so that all those same people say, well, not him, not him. We need to find someone else. And they end up scraping from the bottom of the barrel and really allowing and encouraging substandard scholarship to pass for brilliance, or at least pretending.

5:19Coleman Hughes:And so I was thinking of all the stories, all the people I know that meet this criteria. Thomas Sowell grew up in the Jim Crow South in a house without electricity or hot water, and ends up, you know, Harvard, UChicago, teaching at Cornell, and going on to have this very impressive academic career and trade publication career. Glenn Lowry grows up on the south side of Chicago, working class, working in a factory with a kid as a very young man going, you know, taking night classes and ends up at MIT and Harvard Kennedy School. And you're and you, you know, you you know, if people really want to dive into your life story, they should listen to our last podcast.

6:08Coleman Hughes:We don't have to reiterate that. We'll put that in the notes. but you have a story as inspiring as anyone could hope to learn of and it just occurred to me that the Jason Arde situation threw into sharp relief that that you aren't treated in those Arde type circles the way that you should be in in my in my estimation so I'm curious what did you make of the whole Jason Arde scandal yeah I mean well that's a, that's a lot to chew on first. Um, you know, thank you for even mentioning me in the same paragraph as Thomas Sowell and Glenn Lowry, both of them. Uh, I know Glenn, I know very well, and, um, they're both brilliant.

6:54So that's, that's an honor.

6:57Coleman Hughes:You know, the, as you were talking, I was kind of chuckling to myself because I thought, well, maybe the reason that our day got all that, um, attention was because not a lot of folks can run a marathon like that. No one would ever confuse me as someone who liked to run. Look, I'm really, really saddened by the whole RDA stuff. And I don't know all the details like most do, but I know a couple of things that seem pretty obvious. One, I just don't think you got really, really tough feedback. And it's really hard to get tough feedback. I remember a distinct part of life in 2003 or so. And I was at the University of Chicago and I was given a seminar and I was about to pack up my U-Haul and drive to Cambridge.

7:50I was in the Harvard Society of Fellows. And I gave the seminar at Chicago and I mean, you know, I survived, but it was a full contact sport. And it just seemed like everything I said there, you know, I have this idea, that's not good. Oh, I have this idea, I'm not sure. And then literally two weeks later, I'm Harvard's campus and I say something similar. Oh, I'm thinking, oh, wow. And I thought to myself at the time and mentioned it to my grandmother at the time, something has changed. I did not get this much smarter in the last two weeks. Something is really different. and I don't trust this process, I said to her.

8:31And I think that that is part of the issue. And that's what my focus has been about the RDA case and many other cases like this, which is if you're going to give someone an opportunity, I'm all for that, perhaps more than most, because I've been given a lot of opportunities. But if you're going to do that, then the burden is on you to then develop them. and in some sense you know the the one of the key ideas behind DEI is hey these 18 year olds have really noisy signals or heck even these 20 year olds coming out 23 year olds coming out of graduate school have really noisy signals so can we really have an up down decision based on something that you know isn't very predictive for the entire population and we're making find distinctions based on people?

9:17I can understand that. But that means if you take a lower signal on someone because you think they have potential, the burden is on you to make sure you get clear signals before the next time you have to decide promote or not. And that's where I think things break down in the academy and elsewhere, is that we get excited about the opportunities and then are worried or perhaps even scared to hold people to a line. Let me give you one clear example. I was talking to an Ivy League admissions officer, the head of an Ivy League admissions school, and I said, look, I have this intuition. A 1 ,200 SAT coming from the Atlanta projects is more impressive than a 1 ,300 coming from a private school.

10:03Coleman Hughes:I said - I have the same intuition. That's my view. And I said, but can we test this? And the admissions officer said to me, Roland, let me get this straight. If we admitted 50 people and 45 of them worked out and five gotten fights in the common room, I was told, would you think that's success or failure? I said, that is a resounding success in my view. He says, I view that as failure and said, look, it's not about race. You know, we don't off. Sometimes we don't admit the Olympiad gold medalists because we're worried that they're going to, you know, a few years ago, someone couldn't figure out a proof and they trashed the common rooms or something like that.

10:40So that is the, that is the issue, which is if you're going to have a different standard at the time of admission or what have you, then again, it is on you to figure out developmental opportunities for them to show that they were worth taking a bet on. And I think that's what's gone, that's what went wrong in the R-Day case and likely many others.

11:03Coleman Hughes:That's very interesting. So in the case of those 50 admitted students, we're going to admit 50 students on the intuition that their lower test scores represent more potential than meets the eye because of their background. In that hypothetical, 90 % of them were great successes and ended up by some later meritocratic benchmark proving that that was correct in the case of 90%, but 5 % had behavioral issues. And so this was viewed by this person as a failure. Does that mean that Ivy League admissions people are prioritizing having no bad cases as opposed to having many good cases? And if so, how does that actually square with affirmative action as it's been practice because it has been practiced at all these schools yes great great question uh just one tiny thing because i'm a nerd it's 10 10 so it'll be 90 and 10 oh sorry yeah but but um the the i think it is minimizing you know it's downside risk protection i think and look i don't know this is one you know one person i'm i i chatted with a few years ago but in a sense it's it's more applicably more more widely applicable.

12:26I think, you know, the thing that the 1300 from the private school has, even if they're in the middle of the distribution, they understand the social, um, parts of being in an Ivy league school in a ways that I certainly did not when I showed up, uh, you know, I showed up wearing jerseys and people like, what's wrong with you? Um, and so I think that is part of the calculus. It's not just academics. Um, it is, can they fit in socially here? Are they going to, And so this part of it is a social club, not just an academic institution. And I believe if you're trying to say, look, how can we get a distinguished class but minimize the chance for, you know, true disruption, then I can imagine that this would be, if those were your preferences, they're not mine, but if they were your preferences, I can imagine that this would be a rational choice.

13:16Coleman Hughes:That what would be a rational choice? to take someone who is less risky and, you know, kind of, I would call it low mean, low variance. My view is if you're going to take someone low mean, you should have high variance, right? So if you're going to, that's our whole point about 1200 from the Atlanta projects, which is if you're going to accept someone who has a lower average test score than others, you might admit, then they should have a, a, a large right tail or the distribution of possibilities, meaning with the right coaching, with the right mentoring, with the right development, this person could end up being the top of our class, and we should do some experiments like that.

13:56So I do believe that, again, I don't have these preferences, but I think that a lot of universities do, which is they're worried about taking risks because they're worried about the downside. For them, firefights on campus because someone didn't get along socially is a big, big deal.

14:14Coleman Hughes:It's a big story. It's a big story, yeah. even if it's a very small number of students. One suicide is a big story, for instance. So all of that would suggest that in your ideal world, college admissions would be more willing to take risks with people from poor or chaotic backgrounds, whereas what they do, in fact, is admit a kid like me from an upper middle class background that's likely to fit in and went to private high school. Well, I want both. Both. Right? I want both. But on the margin, I want to say, look, let's compare. Let's not, you know, I'll take the Coleman Hughes at the top of his private school with lots of potential and lots of resource.

15:02Perfect. Okay? Now, if Coleman Hughes was at the bottom of their private school, given they had a bunch of resources, I'd think twice about that. Right? In fact, I wouldn't admit that student. Because, again, that's low mean, low variance. whereas if I had someone with the same test scores from the Atlanta projects who had never had a tutor and never had the type of investments in their development that you may have had, this hypothetical Coleman, then that's a risk I'd be more willing to take. But here's what I actually think should happen. Why are we waiting to the college stage to do these investments?

15:38What I really believe, and I've written about this, is that in some sense the Ivy Leagues control their supply. This is not like Google, where you say, Google invested in K-12 education. Well, okay, but if a great engineer comes out, they're just as likely, more likely to go to Anthropoc than Google, so that's a public good. And so I get why Google doesn't want to invest in public goods for others. However, for the Ivy League schools themselves, I mean, it's a pretty small set of them, and they can help influence supply. So why not create some, you know, Ivy League prep schools themselves? It would be a tiny portion of the endowments of these Ivy League schools.

16:19Let's take sixth graders in the inner cities in Atlanta and let's give them six years to develop and be judged on a regular standard like anyone else. I believe that would work. I fundamentally believe that if given the right environment and the right investments, that any kids can thrive. I mean, I've just seen a lot at different areas of the spectrum in terms of the income spectrum. and you know I like to say that the kids in the neighborhood where I lived with my grandmother were you know we we wasted gallons of talent and in the neighborhood I live in now with my daughters and the schools they go to we've got teaspoons of talent that are nurtured like crazy and so there's a big big difference and I if that difference wasn't there we we why would we we we wouldn't need a different standard at the time of admission.

17:20So, you know, I don't want the universities to do anything miraculous at the time of admission. If we really believe that, that all kids can learn and everyone says it. So, and I believe it. So let's, let's act like we believe it. Let's go out and create Ivy league academies, sixth grade, ninth grade, whatever grade is right. And, and let's demonstrate that given the right situations, any kid can, independent of their background can achieve at a very high level.

17:49Coleman Hughes:Yeah, I think I've told this story before, but I went to public school until I was 11 or 12 years old, good public school. And I was effortlessly at the top of every class. And, you know, I did my homework in 10 minutes, and then went out and played whatever, basketball, whatever, like, and I just thought like, that's, I was very happy with that. Why wouldn't I be happy with that? My parents were happy with that my grades were perfect life was good then I went to a private school the level was considerably higher and it was shocking I was shocked and hurt by the fact that it was no longer effortless and I remember one night I was like crying hot tears because the the level of intellectual effort that I was having to put in for the first time in my life I didn't know that this was a thing right that you had to work this hard that people around there that seemed to get things better than me and quicker than me and sure enough by the end of a year or two I was in the top of that school as well through hard work and and also just being pushed so that I realized my my skills were much my potential was just much higher than than I had previously thought and a lot of people have these types of experiences in life, uh, often it's with like athletics.

19:11Coleman Hughes:Like you just don't know what your body is capable of until someone has pushed you past tears and pain. And then you realize, holy shit, my body can do twice as much as I thought it could. And I never would have done this had I not been actually like pushed, uh, in an unpleasant way. So to me that, you know, when you talk about investing, part of investing is like unpleasant for the person being invested in and we a lot of us have this experience but i think it's it's harder to operationalize that lesson in others because like i don't know that i want to push someone that hard i mean you see like you have you seen the video of jalen brunson's dad coaching him have you seen this it's like you know it's like real, real tough love, real, but like, that's kind of what it is.

20:04But it's love, Colby. You got to love and believe in the people that, that you're decidedly trying to help. And if you're not willing to push them, do you really love them? You know? And, and I think what happens oftentimes is that we're, and I don't want to sound cynical because I'm not, I'm very optimistic, but, but oftentimes we don't push because we think we're worried they're going to think we're the bad people. we're gonna you know no one wants to call out a black faculty member because oh my goodness I might be thought of as a bigot right I've seen it with with black faculty members I've seen it with uh women faculty members they give a seminar it doesn't go well no one says a word and I'm like I know you see I know you see this right but it's it's just a silent thing that goes on whereas I think all of those folks minorities actually just want constructive feedback and you're exactly right.

20:56I mean, I had the same, I don't know if you're right, but we're certainly correlated. I had the exact same experience, you know, I, you know, my daughter goes to a all girls private school in Boston and, you know, they have two hours, at least a homework night, you know, and she's just used to it because that's what she's been doing since she was very young. I, I joke with this. She's done more homework in a week than I did all through 12. And that's not a good thing, but it's just a fact. And when I got to college, I I failed my first calculus exam. And I remember the professor passed it back and I was like, is this out of 50?

21:32He was like, no, bro.

21:37And I was like, I can't, you know, there's no other option. I can't fail. This can't happen. And so I went to my, you know, my brain trust, the fellows who were living next to me in the dorm. I said, what should I do? And he says, it's clear. You got to cheat. I said, no, I'm not down with that, but what else do you think I should do? And finally, I stumbled on someone who says, why don't you find the person who made the best score and figure out what they did? Okay, so turns out it was a woman in the class who was actually like maybe late 20s or early 30s, which for an undergraduate class was quite old, frankly, and I asked her, what'd you do?

22:15And she said, I studied 15 hours before each exam. I said 15 hours in total for the year she said no no no I'm serious she said for each exam it was mind-blowing to me but I did it and uh I studied for the next exam fifth I never studied in my life I put in the fifth literally with the clock on put it in 15 hours and I made straight showed me that it never dawned on me that athletics and academics were similar until that moment. If you had told me, Roland, if you want to bench 315 pounds, you want to put three plates on each side on a bench press, you need to do 15 hours, it made complete sense to me.

22:59But the idea that to make an A in calculus in college, you had to put in 15 hours for each test, was like, really? I thought just paying attention would be enough because that's what public schools were like for me. In any event, that's the kind of thing where everyone needs, I agree with you, everyone, I want, look, I'm not, I'm an economist. I get that there are differences in capabilities in the population. I just don't think they differ by race or gender. In fact, my research tells me they don't. And so when you see the kind of gaps that we see that I believe that's something else. And so, and, and the way to get to, to really, truly test that and to understand it is let's give folks an opportunity.

23:41Let's push them hard. Let's risk being called bigots because we're pushing them hard and not accepting excuses for failure. And let's see how well they do.

23:49Coleman Hughes:What's the strongest piece of evidence, maybe one or two pieces of evidence from your research that push back against the claim of innate differences between races? Well, you know, years ago I went out and found data that on a nationally representative sample of eight month olds that gave them cognitive tests. now eight months old there's a lot of noise in those tests similar to the SAT but more noise in any event there are zero racial differences early in life they grow as the kids age themselves they grow more when they're in school than when they're out of school right that's not that's not baseline genetic differences necessarily it has a lot to do with the schools that they're in and we even show kids in the same type of school their paths converge, not diverge.

24:45Coleman Hughes:Let's talk about the news that you're bringing on the show right now, which is you have created a prize for scholars that are involved in research that bucks a consensus. Tell me, why did you come up with this idea? And Bill Ackman is involved with this as well. So tell me a little bit about this. Sure. You know, I've, I've just witnessed, um, over the last decade, both on Harvard's campus and elsewhere, that people are shying away from controversial topics. Um, I wouldn't even say controversial topics. I don't like that word. people are shying away from interesting topics. The question I get from students more than anything are, can I say this in public?

25:43Can you publish something like this? What would happen to me if I did? And it's like we're in the situation room with the nuclear codes. I'm like, no, we're in a coffee shop in Harvard Square and we're talking about a regression you ran. And that worries me. And a few years ago, I teach a couple of undergraduate courses. And in one of them, I go in early. I just chat casually with the students before the lecture begins. And I asked one of the students, where do you all talk about the big issues of the day? Like, what's the format these days? I said, I'm old. You know, where do you debate religion?

26:23Where do you talk about abortion rights? where do you talk about race and genetics? Where do you talk about climate? And she looked at me and goes, we don't. And I said, what do you mean we don't? That was the best part about going to college for me was that we stayed up late in dorm rooms and it was the first time I had to confront the types of people that I may have read about but never met. I had to talk to someone from India about arranged marriage because from someone from Texas, that seemed like the craziest thing I'd ever heard of. Or the first time that, frankly, I'd met a gay man and talked to him about their experience and what that was like.

27:08And those conversations were sensitive. And I think they were done with deep empathy, although we were 19 years old, so who knows. But I believe if you asked anyone around those dorm rooms, we learned a lot from each other. You know, it was the first time, frankly, you'll appreciate this because you would have been the one on the other side of this argument, I think. It was the first time I had to confront someone about how do you tell if there's discrimination? And I said, pardon me, you may never have me on after this. I remember telling a guy who had grown up on a farm in lower Illinois. I said, look, I can just spot a racist by looking at them.

27:57And he looked at me and busted out laughing in my face. He's like, that is the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my entire life. Am I a bigot? Is he a bigot? And he just started pointing at people. And I was like, wow, you know, at home, no one ever questioned that. and and so at any rate that that i was went to college at a time where that type of debate was not only possible it was encouraged lots of people did it and and and we got to know each other and appreciate each other each other and i think learn a lot and for me you know it's easy to learn linear algebra but that was really where my education i think as a social scientist at least was really produced in any event.