CLAIM: Harvard's Investigation of Sexual Harassment Allegations Against Econ Prof Deeply Flawed

Roland G. Fryer, Jr

Harvard's Winthrop House Faculty Dean Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr. has sharply criticized the university's handling of sexual harassment allegations against Economics Professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr., reports the Harvard Crimson. And Sullivan is apparently testing to determine whether the race card trumps the sexual harassment card.

A RealClearInvestigations article, says Sullivan called Harvard's Office for Dispute Resolution investigations into Fryer “deeply flawed and deeply unfair.” He alleged investigators “weighted the credibility of white witnesses far above minority witnesses” and ignored the testimony of several EdLabs employees who spoke in support of Fryer.

“It shows what the current [#MeToo] movement, some blood in the water, and good coaching [of witnesses] can produce,” he said.

Sullivan alleged Harvard investigators acted without a “semblance of due process or the presumption of innocence” and their report used racial stereotypes.

“Roland was constantly portrayed as an over-sexualized black man who no one could tell no,” Sullivan said. “Yet, there was not one piece of evidence of someone telling him no and him doing something mean to them. Even [a hostile witness whom he had fired] said in her interview that Roland’s so-called ‘yelling’ is not about raising his voice but it’s the intensity of his look and how his voice sounds.”

Of course, the real deal here is, as I have pointed out before, that Fryer holds politically incorrect views.

Justin Feldman, a social epidemiologist at NYU who "examines the ways in which structural racism and economic inequality influence population health," wrote in July 2016:

Roland Fryer, an economics professor at Harvard University, recently published a working paper at NBER on the topic of racial bias in police use of force and police shootings. The paper gained substantial media attention – a write-up of it became the top viewed article on the New York Times website. The most notable part of the study was its finding that there was no evidence of racial bias in police shootings, which Fryer called “the most surprising result of [his] career”. In his analysis of shootings in Houston, Texas, black and Hispanic people were no more likely (and perhaps even less likely) to be shot relative to whites.

Fryer’s analysis is highly flawed, however. It suffers from major theoretical and methodological errors, and he has communicated the results to news media in a way that is misleading. While there have long been problems with the quality of police shootings data, there is still plenty of evidence to support a pattern of systematic, racially discriminatory use of force against black people in the United States.

This is why he is a target. But speaking truth to the Harvard establishment that sits in judgment of you is never a good idea, so Fryer's best shot is probably the race card.

-RW