Harvard professor Roland Fryer says ‘all hell broke loose’ after study found no racial bias in police shootings

During an interview with The Free Press's Bari Weiss, Fryer said people quickly "lost their minds" after he published his findings.

Fryer said that colleagues begged him not to publish the study, and he knew it would generate backlash once he did. "I had colleagues take me to the side and say, 'Don't publish this. You'll ruin your career,'" he said.

Due to the threats and backlash after it was published, Fyer said he had to have armed guards protecting him and his family for over a month. "I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with the armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy," Fryer told Weiss.

According to Fox News, Fryer's study of the Houston police department found that police were 23.8 percent less likely to shoot black suspects, 8.5 percent less likely to shoot Hispanic suspects than they were at white suspects but were more likely to use more physical means of nonfatal force against them.

Fryer said when the results came back in a way that he was not expecting, he hired eight new assistants and tested the results, which came out the same.

The backlash continued in 2019 after now-disgraced former Harvard dean Claudine Gay suspended Fryer for two years after he was accused of engaging in "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature." Gay claimed his research and conduct "exhibited a pattern of behavior" that was not up to Harvard standards.

Fryer told Weiss that he hears karma is "a motherf*cker" when she asked him about Gay.

According to the Free Press, Fryer is the author of more than 50 papers, and became the youngest black tenured professor ever at Harvard. He was also awarded the MacArthur Genius Fellowship, and a John Bates Clark Medal at 34. The medal is given to an economist who has made the most significant contributions to economic thought and knowledge while under the age of 40.