Roland Fryer Gets Promoted

My friend and co-author Roland Fryer, an assistant professor at Harvard, has just been promoted. Usually, for an academic, that would mean getting tenure. For Roland, it is a little different. He’s been named a CEO — not Chief Executive Officer, but rather Chief Equality Officer for the New York Public Schools system. You can read about it in this New York Times column.

You have to admire Roland. Most academics at his stage in their career stay up at night worrying about what journals will publish their papers and what they will land if they get denied tenure. Roland, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what he can do to change the world for the better.