Roland Fryer, Jr. is a professor of economics and associate director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University. In January 2008, he became the youngest African-American to receive tenure from Harvard. Fryer is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and a former junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows — one of academia's most prestigious research posts. He has published papers on topics such as the racial achievement gap, the causes and consequences of distinctively black names, affirmative action, the impact of the crack cocaine epidemic, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and 'acting white.' He is an unapologetic analyst of racial inequality who uses theoretical, empirical, and experimental tools to squeeze truths from the data — wherever that may lead. One of Fortune Magazine's "most influential minorities" and featured in Esquire's "Genius Issue," Fryer's work has been profiled in the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and Black Voices.