Harvard Professor: The Facts About Police Brutality - Roland Fryer

I thought I was going to be able to show that the police were biased very easily and then we gathered literally millions and millions of data points on lethal use of force what we found was Zero racial differences and that is the part that made people really really upset really angry lack of bias made people upset and I agree yeah yes the world was turning upside down yes there were threats against me and my family police Are rationally responding to what they view as threats right when I embedded myself in the Houston Police Department I

noticed that independent of the skin color the police officer was really scared when he pulled someone over I asked him why he says man this is Texas we assume everyone's got a gun Rand it's awesome to have you on the show I've been tracking your work for a very long time um I the conversation you had with our good friend Barry Vice was One of the most interesting and funny things that I've ever seen not as it turns out you're a former standup or you did stand up for a while um but before we get

into your work and your opinions there was one particular incident that obviously changed the course of your life quite profoundly uh you're this super promising Economist you've done incredibly well from a very difficult background uh getting to that position you're very promising you do this one Study about police brutality and police violence against uh black suspects in particular and then you're suddenly under police protection for over a month and all sorts of other crazy stuff happens tell us about that what happened what happened in the study or what happened to me both both yeah well

in the study it was I I was it started back in 2014 when um we all uh were kind of mesmerized about what was going on with Michael Brown Etc and there were Protests happening around the country and I wanted to do something but protesting is not my thing I mean other folks go for it but it's not my thing but I wanted to do something that I thought would help so I thought this was going to be the easiest thing I'd ever done so I went and tried to collect some data and I thought

I was going to be able to show that the police were biased very easily um I grew up in the in the South uh partly in Florida partly in Texas and I grew up not liking the police so I just thought this was the E literally the easiest thing I'd ever done and a uh colleague came to me and said what are you working on these days I said oh I'm just about to write this great paper showing the police bias and he says interesting um what do you think the police are are maximizing what

do you think their side of the story is and what does maximizing mean just what are they solving for what when they go to Work every day what are their set of incentives what are they after what are they trying to achieve at work and it's something that I had not thought about at all it was embarrassing right and so I made arrangements to figure out how to actually do ride alongs with the police and I I in fact I you guys should do right along should be good at we're planning to yeah you should

do it and uh and bring and bring a weapon and uh it's uh I don't recommend doing it in Camden That was the first city I had done it in where is Camden by the way Camden New Jersey it's it's uh you know um a city that has at least had a lot of crime and uh especially given it's it's relatively small it's close to Philadelphia and so here we are on the ride alongs and I'm embarrassed to tell you like after a few hours hours I became the worst police officer you could ever imagine

right everyone I saw looked like a criminal right like I was Going around and the cops were like you really should not be a cop because I would go around and and I'd say what's that guy doing you know dribbling that basketball looks suspicious to me let's pull him over what do you mean let's pull him over anyway I did this and um and then we gathered literally millions and millions of data points on Police use of force um and I again thought that this was going to show all sorts of bias what We found

was that in the kind of um non-lethal uses of force so pushing someone up against a car or drawing your weapon on them but not arresting them or pushing them on the ground those types of uses of force there are large racial differences There's real racial bias uh in those uses of force in fact um just here in New York uh a black person during that time was 50% more likely to have Force used on them in any given interaction with the police office Officers crazy right uh that was lower level uses of force but

then we also collected data from 16 different cities across the US on lethal use of force uh the kind of force used on Michael Brown and others and that's what the protesting really was about and in those uses of in that in those situations what we found was Zero racial differences in Police use of force and that is the part that made people really really upset really angry uh lack of bias made people Upset and angry yeah uh and in fact one of the you know I talked to a newspaper reporter before the paper was

even public and he says I wouldn't right about this the first part's obvious and the second part's wrong what do you do about that and so um we released those results and look I'm skipping over a lot of stuff here I mean not only did we think we did a rigorous job in the actual analysis but then we literally uh when we got these Very surprising results hired new research had them do it all over again just to make sure that they were robust right like we I I was a little worried about not worried

but um I wanted to be sensitive about putting results like this out into the world because they were also counter to my own beliefs um but we did and um yeah I'd say that though you know for a while I thought yes the world was turning upside down yes there were threats against me And my family but the the interesting part was there were thousands and thousands of emails that came from places like Kansas and Colorado and Cal everywhere across the US who said wow thanks for actually using data to to shed at least some

light on this and I've got the following 30,000 questions but at least you're bringing real analysis to this question because our cities are literally burning and no one's talking about what the actual Facts are so thank you and I engaged with lots of people on that Dimension but yes I was very very surprised at um how upset you know uh fellow academics got um you know as I've said before I was taken to the side and said you're going to ruin your career and I naively thought we were in this to actually develop a set

of facts I actually thought that's what tenure was for I didn't I later realized it was for drinking chard day at 10:30 in the Morning but but I at that point I thought tenure was for going after the truth even if it was unpopular and that the University was going to protect you from Whatever May Come of you being a real social scientist or at least following the facts as you saw fit so it you know it we um produced this result I'm still very very proud of the work we did uh but I highly

uh underestimated the response Ren there's something before we Get into all of that you said that uh but I think in the study and cor me if I'm wrong Black and Hispanic people are more likely to see to be pushed around by the police uh suffer physical Force etc etc do we know why that is particularly is it that people from those types of communities are more likely to see the police as a threat and therefore they're more likely to resist arrest is it that the police go in more aggressively do we know what is

that Happening that's a great question uh we don't have a perfect answer on that but we have some threads so one of the most interesting coefficients in that study to me is that when the police report that a suspect is fully compliant they were not arrested and no Contraband was found nothing went wrong in this traffic stop as reported by the police blacks are 25% more likely to have Force used on them even in those Interactions wow right and so you know yes there's some um police departments who have who written to me and says

you know you're saying use of force but what you really mean is response to resistance and no that's not what I mean I mean use of force here um because even in situations where again I I can't emphasize this as enough the police report they are fully compliant right I took a lot of flack for people say how dumb can you be you use police reports Well stop and think for a second if the police are reporting it and they still you can still find bias in that data you can really believe it see what

I'm saying and so the police report them being fully compliant and yet there's still a large racial difference in the use of force so I don't know exactly why that is we gave we did some very um uh a set of pretty rigorous bias tests so we actually think there is um just it's racial disc part of it is racial Discrimination not all of it some of it can be explained also by the behavior of civilians that also differs but it can't explain all of it so I think there's enough kind of um not fault

but there's enough uh both sides of of that equation that you described civilians acting differently police potentially being biased we find evidence for both of those and now the key question is what can we actually do about right um and and you know what we try to propose is a Way to um work with police departments um to eliminate this type of bias uh because I think it's at the root of a lot of the discontent in black neighborhoods between the police and uh and civilians look if we admit that some of the racial differences

in Police use of force are due to bias and then there's a controversial shooting it's almost irrational for someone in the community not to believe that the shooting before you saw this Data right you'd say well on the things I do know I know there's discrimination on the thing I can't really observe I wasn't at the shooting H May probably was discrimination right and so um I think this is a point that we don't make enough but if it's hard to negotiate with the police with the police directly on shootings right hold your weapon all

that's hard you know their lives are at stake too yeah but on the lower level uses of fors right Every Department I've talked to privately knows that they there's there's uh there are things that they can do better on the lower level uses of force that would then Garner Community Support so that we could actually have productive conversations when a controversial shooting happens Roland I sorry Francis I feel like we're getting into the meat of the conversation which is great but I want to take one quick detail before we carry on which is you Said

something that think in the moment that we're sitting here is a very interesting conversation to at least explore which is you said protesting isn't for me why there are many ways of making a difference right and you know I don't begrudge anybody who wants to have free expression and and to protest great uh it's just an economic lingo It's not my comparative advantage okay right I am a data nurse ner so when I see a problem my first inclination is not to stand up and and protest my first inclination is let me get a bunch

of data and prove to people why this is what's actually going on here and you know to make real social progress maybe you need both um and I'm sure some of the people who are about protesting uh are saying well numbers aren't my thing great you do your thing And I'll do mine but it's not that I have anything against it in any way shape or form it's not just for me and the other quick detour I wanted to take and and I'm posing this in a very kind of Devil's Advocate kind of way um

my read of you you're someone who cares about the truth who's prepared to be the outlier who's prepared to say the unpopular thing from various conversations that I've seen you have so how true is it that you did this study Out of a desire to prove that the police are biased was there a part of you that was kind of I'm going to like find something out here that's going to be different to what everyone else is saying the exact opposite it was wow I'm going to finally find something people going to like me oh

boy were you wrong yeah no it's it it is not um I promise I do not get up in the morning thinking let me try to stir the Kool-Aid Today right like that is not my view on the other hand you know sorry my fellow academics they don't I'm not afraid of them right like they don't you know they don't intimidate me in any way shape or form and so um I'm not scared to say uh what I believe is the truth but I'm not an instigator I'm not a people I hate when people call

me controversial I don't want to be right I think people who stick to even though it doesn't fit the facts that's Controversial people who follow the data wherever they lead I mean isn't that social science and so um no I I literally thought this is going to be the easiest paper I'd ever written because I just come off of paying kids to learn oh my gosh think you know now people pay kids to learn they're like this is interesting but back in 2008 oh this was horrible I mean I was compared the to the Tuskegee

experiments literally right can you Imagine that you get up one day you go to work and there's someone with the pi speaking of protesting someone with a picket sign who said Rolland frier is the worst thing for black people since the Tuskegee experiments what what are they because I don't know what they are oh okay well let me give you the the the dichotomy here pain kids on the one hand to do the things that will help them later in life unknowingly injecting people with syphilis you do the math Right crazy like just crazy yeah

yeah yeah no it that's what the that's what Happ anytime anyone has the wrong opinion now they're literally Hitler this is basically it it's the same thing it's crazy right so I had just come off of that and then we had done this work in Houston where we took the worst schools in Houston and uh and did all we could to reform them and so through that that education journey and we had written some papers On charter schools that people didn't love I thought this is my chance people are going to really finally like something

that I do and you know the thing that I found disappointing from the reaction and the inevitable Fallout where it's inevitable now with the benefit of hindsight is your report as we've touched on raised some really interesting points which actually if we look to the results dispassionately there are things that we all need to Work on particularly the police and actually if we address them we could make relations between the African-American community and the police so much better and actually we could have as a result of that a more cohesive Society look where were you

in 2016 keeping my head down that's where I that guy's controversial right of course yes 100% but that's the reason I think there was so much push back because it was coming From different directions literally the emails I was getting the communication I was getting on the one hand people thought oh my gosh what are you doing this is not true there's you know police are out there murdering um uh innocent black people and on the other hand I had police telling me what are you talking about we're not biased right and so and in

fact right um uh when we published this in the New York Times the the the folks that um Were interviewing me at the time they were more concerned with calling NYPD biased than they were saying that shootings were unbiased at the time very very different now but at the time that's where the that's where the nervousness was coming from when they published it the world has changed he's apparently remained the same I'm consistent how much do you think the reaction to your report and the Fallout and the general narratives Are to do with history the

way that the police has behaved in the past if we think about things like Rodney King for instance and all of those types of incidents it has a lot to do with that again the the relationship between black communities and the police are broken in most communities and that's why I believe just like you just described working together on these lower level uses of force um when the when the stakes are lower that is the Place to really have reform right it's it's it's hard when you when the police good was seen there's weapons involved

and you say well now is the time to compromise no I'm not sure okay and so yeah that's the you know that that that is the source and so there have been years and years decades of um of uh contentious relationships between black people and the police so you know look if you go to the black neighborhoods none of this surprised Anybody um and it has just come into the mainstream in the last uh few years but this has been boiling over for a while and again the frustrating part to me is if we could

all look clear eyed at the data there are positive things we can do for change right this is these are not marks on a chalkboard this isn't academic research anymore that's done the question is how are we going to work together to actually create better relationships between communities and Police in a way that's productive and a way that we can actually um talk through some of the difficult issues it seems like the challenge there from what I understand is there's a kind of mutual bias going on because from uh somebody who's a civilian as you

say the the perspective is they're being mistreated because of the skin color and so on and from the police perspective from people I've spoken to as well there's the the thing they'll say is well different Groups people commit crimes at different rates so if if if I'm a black police officer white it doesn't really matter if I turn up to the scene of a crime and half the time it's a black perpetrator that's going to build in certain narratives in my head so next time I pull someone over and they are black how am I

not going to be a little bit more wary of that and then you've got that Mutual bias kicking in people are mutually suspicious of each other how Does that get untangled well I think we got to look for better Clues than just black or white right right I mean when I was in college they used to we used to call it the Usual Suspects like some crime would be committed and they say uh the suspect is between 5'8 and 610 uh he's between 150 and 300 lb uh black male uh black hair and brown eyes

and we're like none of us can go outside right it's and so we need to do better than that um I joked with um uh With uh Loretta Lynch ones that that we need to have um is there something can we have TSA Pre is there something I can do that when the police pull me over uh they can look Beyond just race right uh is it kind maybe if I wear you know salmon colored pants I mean that's something that not a lot of criminals do I don't want to do it either might be

worth being roughed up um but you get the idea we have to figure out other Context clues beyond that right but you're right police are rationally responding to what they view as threats right when I uh embedded myself in the Houston Police Department I noticed that independent of the skin color the police officer was really scared when he pulled someone over I asked him why he says man this is Texas we assume everyone's got a gun yeah right and so there all of these layers of complexity are here I just want it to be um

several layers deeper Than just saying look at look at that person uh of of their race and you know it's the other the other uh extreme also frustrates a lot of us have you ever been in a TS a pre- line where they're patting down the 90-year-old you're like I don't know we can we get this line moving right we start to to to stereotype from the other direction so I just think we need better ways of of understanding who's a threat and who's not and so you presented your findings You presented your paper what

happened then at that point monk debates is a place where the world's leading thinkers debate the most pressing issues of our time and we're truly honored to be partnering with them it's no secret that we are living in an era of heightened polarization where people with opposing views are refusing to engage with each other for fear of legitimizing the other side the monk debates is one of the only platforms where the world's leading Thinkers can still debate the most important and controversial questions of our time as a monk member you can watch legendary debates like

Douglas Murray versus Malcolm gladwood on mainstream Media or Jordan Peterson versus Michael Eric Dyson on political correctness or trigonometry guest Richard Dawkins debate with former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the role of religion on society there are over 15 years of incredible debates when you Become a member to find out more go to www.mon debates.com and now on with the show you know um in the beginning I thought all this is going really well I did I got ad ad I'm not sure I've ever aditt I really thought I said this is like I

really I really crushed this one hit the spot hit the spot right um because you know we have this uh place in economics where we where we put our working papers and the one of the people That worked there uh sent me a note in the first weekend it was published and says man you just broke all the download records you know this is this paper's hot and it was in the New York Times an upshot or what have you my emails were exploding um President Obama at the time invited me to the White House

for a very long meeting about Police use of force and I thought I am making a difference um but as the narrative started to change over Time um and yes there was let me back up yes there were uh threats of physical violence and we had police protection and all that stuff and that was not good but I was focused on all the the good things I thought could come out of this and but over time it has become something where um I don't know it's it's it's it's people have used it um to kind

of not just write me off but write off research in this way uh kind of writ Large and that has been very surprising um you know it has has uh contributed to I think other social scientists uh being less willing to to follow the facts wherever they lead and I think that is really if I'm right about that I hope I'm not actually that's really really bad for sure you know I've got students that you know uh I meet with in Harvard Square who say things like I can't say this in public And I'm like

who are you like like this is just you and I over a cup of coffee and people have become so leery of it and and um and the way that the paper has been covered by both sides right both sides uh I I saw once or read once that people were saying uh football players shouldn't kneel at the national anthem because my paper demonstrates they should kneel I thought my paper has nothing to say about whether or not they kneel at the national anthem or not Um and on the other hand I've seen researchers find

the exact same results but bury them either bury them in appendix tables or refuse to publish them at all and so it has been really quite chaotic since then I would say that again the first month or two I thought wow this is great I can't wait to do the next thing um but my life really got turned upside down because of it and what one last thing I know I'm rambling but I this take your time and I Want the most important thing is I do it all over again 100% uh and almost in

the exact same way not because I didn't make any mistakes along the way and all that but because I just refuse to lie to people especially uh the constituents that I'm I've been working for my entire life I've been doing this for 21 years years 80 plus hours a Week it's hard enough empirically to figure out what the truth is I'm not going to constrain myself for only those truths that are in a nice box with a particular bow can't do that this is after we're trying to solve problems right and yes my life was

turned upside down who cares right it this is about whether or not we can actually get police to change and actually get get folks in the neighborhood to understand that yes there are some issues but uh You know the biggest threat in the world is not their their police officers and can we come together uh to make the country better as it come when it as as regards Public Safety for me that's what this is about so who cares what happened to me um you know if if I discover a a result like this tomorrow

I'm going to put it out in the same exact way and if I suffer the same consequences so be it I I respect that and I get that uh the question I was going to ask you is you Mentioned the narrative changing I can't imagine what it's like you do a paper you get called in by the president for a lengthy conversation about your research and then quote unquote The Narrative changes like I don't even know what that means like who changed it I don't know man I don't know who gets to change narratives it's

is what it is mind bendy truly right I can imagine well maybe I can't a few years ago you weren't allowed to say a joke on campus And now you can call for the genocide of whole populations and that's free speech so exactly progress and let me guess you were there all along yeah yeah I was consistent so I don't know who gets to I don't know who decides that but who was coming I guess part of what I'm asking is who was coming after you was it uh black people in the neighborhood who were

saying your research is not sufficiently reflective of our reality Was it white academics who were like this is a toxic subject you've got the wrong conclusions was it the media was it all of those at once like I I get I'm genuinely asking like who gets to change the narrative from you're sitting in the White House to suddenly you're you're some kind of demon Monkey D all of the above okay um it was but i' put the least amount of emphasis on people in the communities okay um you know I think people in the communities

had questions And and you know civil rights folks in the communities had questions U which ranged from are you sure the Houston's representative of this or that which is a fair question totally bring that all day long totally to did you have to put it out here we had him on the ropes brother you know I'm not going to say who that was but I was like my bad I I didn't know you had them on the Ropes um uh to you know academics who who yeah this is you know um the paper was labeled

hate speech on Twitter at the time right I'm not on social media but someone posted it and account was suspended for hate speech right that's ridiculous that's ridiculous um to other academics who are out lying saying oh he's retracted those results they aren't true silliness right um to uh police officers who some of which you say yes you you may have a Point here to NOP I I don't think there's any bias and and lower level uses of force so again there was something there for everyone not to like um and so maybe it's true

then if it if it if it ended up pissing off everyone um so I don't know your question of who gets to change Chang The Narrative but I will say that different people had different angles on these results yes sure I guess what I'm trying to get at is that seems to me like an Extraordinary thing to happen where you go from being celebrated for this study all the way up to the White House to then people something must have happened in the social Consciousness around that time for people to just see this issue differently

including one of the things that strikes me about it is like why would people people be upset about information that's helpful to taking the conversation forward like that to me is very strange do do you know what I mean No I do know what you mean and I've asked um uh people I respect something similar not quite as elegant as you just did but and they what their view is is look if you've got your mind made up that the police are really discriminatory then this is just annoying to you right that um because the

paper not perfect right I don't have every Police Department I don't know if Chicago's police department is is discriminatory in Shootings versus not I don't have Chicago's data I'd love to um I don't know what's going on in a lot of police departments and the data is not perfect and so in their viw I've put something out there irresponsibly um that shows something that they just know can't be true and so it's inconvenient for them instead of saying huh how how can we work together to collect more data this is the best evidence we Have

let's collect more data let's see if it's real robust that that's how social science typically makes progress but in this case it's such a hot topic or at least has been that people are just jumping to conclusions and taking sides it's become much more tribal than uh social scientific and I'm you know I'm not equipped for that that's not what I do for a living I don't join tribes um uh unless the Nerds have one um but you get the idea so I don't That's what they're upset about I believe though I don't know it's

about narratives isn't it every tribe would they have their narrative if you are for one of a better term conservative Pro police you have this narrative if you are liberal Progressive you have this narrative and when someone who comes along not only challenges your narrative but also provides evidence which is very strong borderline irrefutable then you fac with two options really you Either change the narrative which is incredibly painful because that means that you get isolated from your tribe yeah or you defend your tribe which means you go on the attack yeah and and you

discredit the person or the study or what have you yeah and I think it I think part of that's it this is a um there is a political game going on or political fight going on culture War whatever you want to call it and frankly for both both sides this was a little Inconvenient right um and but um I thought that's what tenure was for I thought that's what we were supposed to be doing I'm pretty thrilled by the idea that you can get data you can do the analysis to your best of your ability

and you can actually be relevant right many of my Economist friends are working on the optimal cake eating problem that's not what this is so for me it was a real truly a real opportunity to actually feel like you were relevant in A discussion that was important I've never written a paper um that spoke to one of the exact points that um people were protesting on in that moment right usually academics are like oh something happened in the world seven years later I got it the world has moved on and it becomes part of History

this I got really lucky I believe that that um this paper was relevant in that moment unfortunately and continues to be relevant um but I Was not expecting cuz I had not seen that I had not had that experience before I was not expecting what would come it's also and maybe this is me projecting a little bit and push back if you feel this is incorrect I imagine it put a few noises out of joint with fellow academics you know because a lot of them toil away they produce their papers they don't get you know

they're not shared a lot they're not talked about a lot and then they move on to the Next one here you have this young guy who comes in produces his paper gets to meet with the president breaks the download records and all of a sudden they're going him why him why not me was that part of it do you think yeah that's interesting I haven't thought much about that it could be and I'd also add to that that um I don't um I don't carry myself as the typical Harvard maybe I do now the Sweater

pretty typal I mean your your shirt is uh my wife me um but but in all seriousness you know when I was younger in my career I'd wear jerseys to class and you I was just you know just being myself right and so um and you know I'm I'm a video game fiction Auto so I had a video game console in my office things like that that um that I think you know they might have not been not just saying I can't believe that but that guy like the guy Who's playing video games during the

day uh so so some of that could have been it there's you know it's no secret there's a lot of uh jealousy in the academy but I think it was it was more than that I think it was um that people wanted to be seen as being on the right side of this issue back to the tribes I mean my own Department put out a statement about Police use of force That was completely opposite of what I what the paper actually showed right that was one of the hardest things to see I'm like it's right

here here I'm in the same department and they their their statement started off we know how much bias and race and discrimin I'm like that's not exactly what we found so not even my own Department could be subtle in that way um so I think people were Running Scared um there was a sense of are you With the good guys or the not and so you couldn't in 2017 or 18 in a in a ivy league university stand up and say I don't know seems complicated let's let's take a look at the numbers it was

nope clearly it's bias we've seen the videos we've seen all you know 12 15 20 of them whatever the number is we've seen them and that's bias and that's the I felt like that was the new jerk reaction that was happening I think the other disappointing thing that happened in my Opinion was that um uh the standards of evidence start to change when you don't like the result and so um there were people I really respected their their methods their analysis over the years followed their work for literally more than a decade who said things

like well I don't this I don't like the way you've done this paper and I was like it's the same as you do right um so what has changed um and so this cherry picking of what's Good and what's bad not based on the fundamentals but based on the output that is that's the part that's most concerning to me you see what I'm saying exactly what you're saying what you're talking about is you're someone who's was interested in pursuing the truth uh who found himself in a politicized environment uh which um this will sound perhaps

like a strange comparison but as someone who grew up in the Soviet Union that's exactly the environment that that The people operated under where there was certain things certain areas if you research physics physics was non-political until it became political for whatever reason and suddenly your physics paper would be politicized and people would have opinions about it and they would criticize it not on the Merit but because it was the tribal thing at that particular moment in time to do so I guess the question I wanted to ask you we've had obviously lots of academics

on The show and anyone looking from the outside into what we see as the manifestations of the academic environment now people have questions and the pursuit of Truth seems to be definitely from an Outsiders perspective one of the things that's really taken a beating in in recent years would you on campuses around the world actually the Western world would you agree with that do you think that's true certainly on the on um you know uh Social topics and sensitive subjects you know I don't I don't have a sense that the math guys are doing functional

Theory any differently than they were before but I do believe that uh you know uh Research into genetics Research into um uh uh gender Identity or other identities Research into the police into education I think those things have been heavily skewed yes I do believe that and uh it's exactly as you described I Really I showed up at Harvard at age I don't know maybe I was 26 or something 25 and the job I had before that is like McDonald's so I don't know anything better I really believed that I mean we sit in these

seminars once a week twice a week and someone presents something and it's just crushing them about exactly how you do economics let's get to the fundamentals of what whether this paper is correct or not I love that process because it didn't really matter What the subject was the question is what is this a valid research design or not and those things get spirited and I did the last three years of my PhD at the University of Chicago which is where they do it really in a spirit way I mean this this is like it was

a full contact sport I love the place really love the place I've given seminars there that have spoiled into the middle of the night and so I fundamentally believed That um and so it literally changed my whole worldview um because I thought oh crap they were playing a different we're playing different games here right and I didn't know that and that obviously doesn't apply everywhere there's you know um there's really really great academics everywhere uh in every place but I have been s surprised because when I came to Harvard as a as a as a

postto I went to the Harvard Society Fellows academics I viewed academics as the place where um smart quirky people went because they had no political skills uh and so they weren't going to go to corporations because those were too political but in in in in a department you it was really about meritocracy and how smart you were and the best ideas would rise to the top I just don't think that's true anymore I think that uh we're selecting for people who are much more political And much more sophisticated on that Dimension because the universities are

you know to to to uh to be successful uh uh if you're if you're a young scholar I believe political sophistication and savvy are very important just on on that point not to personalize this too much Roland but one of the people involved in the campaign against you was uh I nearly said the late Claudine [Laughter] Gay and it seems to me without you know taking a particularly strong stance either way on it that just that her recent departure kind of symbolized a lot of the simmering of the stuff that we've been talking about now

I I know you probably feel quite strongly on a personal level about her but what did you make of that whole Saga including in relation to you but also just in terms of where we are in the way that people are appointed to positions within Academia people are promoted within Academia people are required to have certain opinions people are treated differently depending on their background and ethnic background Etc I found that whole situation pretty sad um uh it was just not um a good day for higher ed for Harvard or wasn't a day weeks and

weeks uh and so I just thought that um particularly Because uh much of the discussion was about her own scholarship which I know nothing about I've never read a paper by Claud um but that um people seemingly around the world were questioning the quality of that at an institution like Harvard was really hard you know um that that that uh was just really sad um so my personal uh involvement with with um the administration aside it's just you know hard to watch every single day people questioning the Uh Integrity the the academic rigor of the

person who was supposed to be leading the university so and when you say it's hard just to be clear you mean because because it the it possibly is the case or do you mean because it's just kind of affects the reputation of Harvard or why is it s both because you know this is what we're there for rigger um and you know I am uh I don't know a lot about University Administration I just don't clearly um So um but you know I I came to the university when Larry Summers was president and um I'll

never forget uh this is not dodging your question this is giv context for your question I got a call when I was uh a fourth year graduate student and I never had a call like this maybe you you're a fancy guy maybe you've had one uh you pick up the phone hello hold for the president of har University okay and so Larry gets on the phone we start talking and he tells me if you come to Harvard because I had offers at other places we'll go to lunch once a month and we'll talk about your

research what that would be Unthinkable now I just couldn't imagine a university president doing that okay so he does it I don't believe him but he says it so I get off I choose Harvard go there within four weeks I get the call off again like To schedule lunch with you and the president okay so I go and we go to lunch and I had just written a paper about how um black students who go to historical black colleges May pay pay a wage uh price and I was calling the paper at that time the

price of identity okay so he he calls me in because he wants to discuss that paper and I go uh oh I must be in trouble and he starts eating and and he Gets so excited about the resar research that he's talking while he's eating and his food is splattering all over him and in that moment that's the first time I ever really felt comfortable at Harvard I thought this guy could be president he's a mess if he can be president then there's a chance because in that moment it felt all about ideas right yeah

right he was sloppily eating I probably was using the wrong Fork but we were talking about Statistical identification in a particular paper that he thought was interesting and so that's what I pride myself of in a minut Administration I want someone who's been through it to help guide you through it would have been nice to have um Larry in 2016 when I was navigating this stuff with Washington and with the paper to to provide guidance right my budget make sure I'm that's silly anyone can do that so I I um the Reason it was hard

is because my preference and the way I started at Harvard was to have a scholar a true scholar president and uh again again I don't know about uh former president gay SC I don't I've never written a read a paper maybe they're phenomenal I don't know but to see the media attacking them those papers and questioning scholarship and questioning what it meant to be at Harvard University as someone who's been there for 20 years that part was hard Sure understand the experience you describe sounds like the way University should operate the pursuit of Truth the

dis that I'm going to sound like a wide-eyed romantic here but that's kind of what I thought Academia was for that's what I thought me too you know I I remember giving uh I had an idea once about uh segregation and how to measure it differently because the old measures of segregation have been around for decades and decades but could we use our New understanding of network Theory to find a kind of network based model of segregation right it's it will sound weird but it's the truth I was flying into Chicago and if you fly

into Chicago at night the whole city is massive but it looks like this grid and the lights kind of make the edges of that grid you can kind of see a matrix and I looked out the window and the plane and I thought geez that's how we should think about segregation because I knew Chicago And I knew basically the uh black people lived in this part of the grid the Polish people it's okay and so um I eventually wrote that paper and then gave it in in one of the flagship seminars uh that Gary Becker

ran at Chicago and Gary Becker's got a Nobel Prize he's a phen pH he was a phenomenal Phenom one of my just absolute heroes in the profession and that seminar went for an hour and a half then it spilled over at Uh to the Q club uh where I'm sitting there with multiple no Nobel Prize winners around the table and assistant professors and other people and me um as an assistant professor or a postto and I just have this image in my head of literally Gary Becker this famous economist with a chicken wing hanging out

of his out of his mouth and pointing to a a piece of a napkin where he was going to scribble some notes while eating the chicken wing about this paper That's we can both romanticize but those are the ways I grew up in Academia so to now have it be a question of can we say that can we say this can we do that can we're not the world's spokespeople right in the same way com comedians aren't political ambassadors I mean some think they are they going to be honest with you but we supposed to

be the the the ground bearers of Truth and then let everyone else figure out the politics we're supposed to just inject Truth into the world maybe that's naive maybe I'm stupid Etc but that is the way I grew up that's what Glenn Lowry and Gary Becker and and some of the greats that's what they that's what they taught me and we have we're way way way different from that we'll be back with our guests in a minute but first last year I was introduced to monetary Metals a gamechanging platform that offers a unique approach to

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investor you're eligible to earn even higher returns we're talking about actually earning interest on gold paid him more gold so if you're looking to protect and grow your wealth look no further than monetary Metals visit monetary-easing uh your research published breaking download records etc etc I my my thought to myself is in a post George Floyd world there's part of me that thinks you Wouldn't even get published now I don't I think there would be some academic institutions maybe not all of them but certainly some of them were like we can't publish this yeah do

we we what are you trying to do yeah you might be right um I I I um one of the projects working on right now is to understand academic freedom so I have um I'm looking into all the published papers uh in the last two decades and I'm using AI to help me understand uh the political Slant of the results with these results be considered Centrist or conservative or liberal and what I'm showing I'm not sure I'm right just yet but the preliminary results are showing are exactly what you just described which are uh they're

far fewer published results that are both Center and and right after um leading up to an after 2020 now the question is is it because the journals are not publishing them which is was your inclination or people Aren't writing them I can't tell the difference maybe progressivism is just true there was a paper you know there was a there was a a uh an article about that in the in the Harvest student newspaper they said what do we need diversity for of thought when progressivism is just the right true I why research we know we

know the answer to everything exactly for but and that is terrifying Because they as as is most commonly said as said all the time the greatest form of censorship is self-censorship yeah so if you've got this idea and you think this could be a dynamite paper and then go but I can't write it because it won't get past I've got the wrong results yeah because it will get the wrong results or what you most likely think is self-preservation what is this going to expose me to because not everybody's like you temperamentally then what we've Got

is essentially A A A system that isn't fit for purpose 100% and you're going to be making policies based on the research that comes out which is only going to be one way because no one wanted to show the other so that's that's what I'm wor that's fundamentally what I what I'm losing sleep at night about that's exactly it so I guess the question is what do we do about this how can we challenge this how can we make a better Academy well I don't know the answer to that because it's very difficult because you

have to um I used to think well let's have uh grant money for controversial ideas that's not going to work because unless people can get tenure and raise amongst the ranks in their profession but by doing what they know is right mhm and I'm skeptical that we can change that part unless you change that overall set of incentives well you know all the rest Of the stuff is window dressing that makes sense to me so until you make truth seeking a high status thing to do within Academia you you can't win you can't win but

but but that's the purpose of Academia so how how how do I mean there's got to be a way to make it to coin a phrase to make Academia great again but but there's there's got to be a way right I'm I'm trying to think of the it's not mag I'm Um yeah I think you know all it takes is a couple universities to show us the way okay so I think you know obviously that's what university of Austin is trying to do um you know there are universities like University of Chicago who has tried

to keep it that way there's uh I just talked to the you know general counsel of a couple of other universities who asked me the exact same question how do we do this and the issue is even if you Do it within your own University if that person doesn't get tenure there they fall potentially uh you know imagine I had a research program that said you know what a lot of people have been looking into government programs uh as a way of helping black Americans I'm going to look into um how um families can do

do a better job I'm not saying that's a good idea or not but just imagine someone said that And they decided on they went on a very rigorous research course over five or eight years on uh on that side of the equation and even if their University supported that and said this is great but it just is beneath the line where you going to go if that doesn't work out right you might there might be a much uh steeper fall because other universities might not like that line of inquiry if that's true again the incentives

for a person to do that that uh are very small And so you not what am I saying with all this you not only need to have to fix one University or two you have to fix a lot there's got to be a way there needs to be a way of saying if the research design and the methods are rigorous enough we don't care what the answer actually is if the data are high quality and the research design is is solid we don't care if the solution points right or left or in the middle and

if there were way to provide Insurance for those people then we could solve the problem but right now what I am hearing um from Young Scholars from graduate students is that they are scared to do these things right um I've had people literally ask me what do you do when you come up with something that's taboo right um what do you I've got these questions but I'm not sure I can answer them do you think I can I of course encourage them but I also know That there are potential cost to this and so uh

you you've got we've got to find a way to provide Insurance isn't that crazy to provide insurance for telling the truth Roland yeah I truth insurance I mean I don't think a lot of people would give you that insurance I'm going to be honest with you a lot of the companies Insurance the premiums on that baby are going to be high Skyrocket for Geico there's it seems to me when I talk To academics or we talk to academics and we interview them they broadly fall into two camps there's two people there's the camp that says

the academy can be saved there's the other Camp which says the academy is beyond saving we need to build newm I realize that's essentially a binary Choice I'm presenting you with are you in one camp or another or is there a third way right I don't think you left any room for a third way um I'll tell you a third Way actually just to add some Nuance to this so I guess the the what we were proposing is like Rolston College in Savannah Georgia they're building a new thing from the ground up yes University of

Austin similar there are other people who work within institutions I was in um Grant Junction in Colorado um and they have a a relatively small College there and they don't they don't do either they're not um they're not like uh massive you know obsess with Dei or Anything like that but they're also not aggressively against any of it they just do things their own way yeah and maybe that's the third way yeah I consider that the first way which is reforming the new institutions we already have right um so I think there's a question of

you know like as if this were a house do we uh refurbish what we have or do we start with new construction and you know maybe the Market's going to tell us a little bit Of both and what the optimal mix is I don't know my inclination is to try to refer Bish what we have although I'm very supportive of what university of Austin is doing trying to do um and here's a but here is a third way the people who were doing the research could just care less about what other people think every big

movement people had to have sacrifice so either you believe in truth And you're willing to pay some personal cost or you don't right if if this were if we were arguing about um uh you know uh some social issue we would say well yes we could have this policy or that policy or they could just work harder right and so in this case why are we letting the scholars off the hook um so maybe that's the third choice is you can go into this realizing maybe I won't win all the Awards uh that I could

if I if I made the results seem more coherent to the day's politics maybe that's okay and maybe if there's enough of those people that that becomes a new thing to actually tell the truth right someone someone said to me the other day I got a note saying I really liked your interview on XYZ authent authenticity is in and I thought what does that even mean right like I I can tell exactly what it means We are in the authenticity moment this is why New Media is taking off the way it is because you know

if you think about what TV is it's a bunch of fake people having a fake conversation in the fake room this is the exact opposite right we're just talking straight and I think this is the moment for authenticity the qu the the flaw in your AR why can't they academics be well this is the flaw in your argument right because I agree with you 100% about People just need to man up and tell the truth and pursue the truth and do the work that they're actually supposed to do on the other hand you're an economist

and you know that human beings respond to incentives first and foremost and if it's not a high status thing to do if it's not a money-making thing to do if it's not a blah blah blah and look at universities I mean I mentioned Dei they're not even hiring or recruiting People based on Merit so if You have an institution that operates in that way why would the people in it pursue the truth at any cost I mean that just that that's not reflective of how people work let me push back this is fun um well

incentives matter but what econom really believes that people maximize utility so then the question is why isn't it that the academics care enough about pursuing the truth right uh yes incentives on the margin matter here or there and yes I Agree the incentives are point in the opposite direction but if you look at at some of the things that people are how Wild this is where we started why are things who gets to change the narrative why do things swing wild wildly one way and wildly the other way maybe uh you called it man up

I'm gonna call it maybe people ought to have a North star sure that maybe we've lost that Compass that that driving force that said it doesn't matter if if I find uh that this group is to blame for something I'm going to say it if I find another group is to blame for that or that's what the empirical evidence says I'm going to say it right and then yes let's get the universities to back you up to provide support for that to do we can we go this far encourage that right that's what I had

when I first got to Harvard I had a a president who who not Only said this is okay but actually encourage the work right and so I think encouragement within the university could go a long way but I also believe that um you know maybe we should be selecting different people to go into the academy do you think is I love it is that a WAP I mean it works for me Franc got more and more question one more question which is how much do you think this is and I've seen It because I used

to work in in I I used to work in teaching and people being afraid of their own students how big of a problem is that um again I don't I don't know uh and I'm not even sure people are afraid of their own students maybe they are it could be that the incentives to to do the right thing when it comes to grading or putting pressure on uh students to to study for this or that are just not there uh um And um you know earlier in my career uh I was a hardliner on I

said the uh papers would do at five o'clock 501 I don't take them and I didn't say you had to turn it in five you could turn it in three weeks ago if you wanted to but five o'clock is the deadline um I'm softer on that now not because I'm scared of the students but because it's 503 do I want the headache that this is going to cause right because the incentives are very Different so I think I think distinguishing between those two is really important I you know I don't um I think that uh

I think we actually uh oftentimes can bend over backwards so much that you actually do the students a disservice MH let me give you a tiny tiny example that means nothing uh you teach a course and you say hey you should read Gary Becker's dissertation on the economics of discrimination published in 1957 see you next class perod uh Professor could you provide a link to that could you send us around a link no just go find it but that we are they're used students are now becoming used to a level of customer service that is

such that um you know everything is just really laid out for them very very carefully um and it's more like problem set solving then deep thinking you have a paper how exactly how many words should it be what Exactly should it's like why don't you decide those the answers to those questions so I you know part of the reason I don't provide links for papers is not because I'm being lazy but because when I was a student when you went to search for the paper you actually found three or four more around there were actually

interesed and I pulled those off the shelf too and so I actually think not by not providing every single thing they need for their Customer service needs you actually provide sometimes can provide a better education for Rand it's been an absolute pleasure having you and we're going to ask you a bunch of questions from our supporters in a second but we always wrap up with the same question which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we should be before Roland answers a final question at the end of

the interview make sure to head over to our locals the Link is in the description give it a click where you'll be able to see this are you able to shed any light on why Thomas Soul's Works have not had a broader reach in the United States is decriminalization of drugs a viable approach have you ever let your personal beliefs be known during lesson time I think the for me that question boils down to we basically know there are three or Five things that could fundamentally change racial inequality in America we know it we know

what to do not to solve or but fundamentally change racial inequality matter why don't we have the political courage to do it what other the things education's huge number one so when I did uh some work on Mobility trying to understand for PE you know you have a set of people who were born into poverty some got out some didn't what's The what are the differences between them number one uh resoundingly education so we know how to uh create better schools for kids we've got exemplars all over the country and yet politics gets in the

way of making those reforms that'd be number one why why do we let that happen as a country right we've got places in our country like you know DC public schools uh where less than 10% of kids are black Kids are proficient in Reading in math and we just go on like nothing happened we're talking about other stuff and so for me uh and we fundamentally know how that's impacting their mobility and if it is extraordinarily frustrating to be in a social scientist shoes and to see hey we actually know things that could fundamentally I'm

not talking about at the margin fundamentally make their lives better And yet the adults can't get their together to help the kids that they say they care so much about so as a society why do we continue to let that happen R what are the things in in that particular I want to go into the other things but on education what are the simp maybe not simple but the obvious answers to dealing with that issue you know we um uh at a high level you know I'm me show you where we got it from then

I'll tell you exactly what they are So we uh took a couple years and went and you know charter schools on average are no better than public schools in America but there are some that are amazing and there's some that are pretty awful okay okay and so what we did was we went in and tried to understand what makes them good what makes them awful right and what we found where that there were five factors that explained 50% of the variance and what makes some schools great and other schools not so great and Those five

factors are the amount of time you spend in school right so that's that's one factor I call it the basic physics of Education if you're behind and they're ahead you need to put in more time or ask them please stop working so hard number two number two um was uh you know how schools use data to drive instruction so um you know when I got started uh data was a real asset in schools now it's almost like a liability there's so much of it no one knows how To process what do you do the schools

that are effective when they see that their students they they they take assessments throughout the year when they see the students aren't getting what they're supposed to in classes they regroup they figure it out they come up with a different strategy and they go back to work so datadriven instruction the third uh is um small group tutoring it is high dosage tutoring if you had to do one thing in education in my opinion It'd be high dosage tutoring you can get incredible gains when you got a kid around a half moon table two kids one

tutor uh and with very direct instruction uh the fourth is you know how human capital the the who are the teachers uh teaching them and how often you give them feedback right so the bad schools give you feedback once a year they come in in the spring you don't teach very well most of the kids fail And they say see you again in the fall um schools that are very effective very often small bits of feedback to ensure that that that teachers have the support they need to get better and the last one is very

very important to me uh all of them are important but this one that speaks to me personally is um culture and expectations uh probably one of the most eloquent political statements I've heard in my lifetime was the soft bigotry of low Expectations and I believe and the data supported that kids live up or down to your expectations like the schools that are effective understand that if you go into an inner city you're dealing with you know uh very high rates of single female headed households poverty Etc they don't use that as an excuse not to

educate them they use that as a way as an excuse to be more efficient inside the school day to say hey we only have seven hours with this kid we got to make Up for single female headed household poverty Etc so we need to get to work we need to use data smartly I need to be able to give you uh feedback on your teaching Etc so those five factors we took those we put them in a randomized experiment in Houston Texas in regular old public schools and we showed that uh in 3 years you

could close the racial achievement Gap in Ma and five years you could do it in reading so you can do this stuff you're not and this is just Little old nerdy me this is not you know uh these phenomenal Superstars like Jeff Gada who who uh runs the Harlem children's Zone here in New York of course he's amazing but he's done the same thing so you can do this at scale we've done it in Colorado we've done it in Houston we've done it in other places uh and so it's very frustrating that even just in

the simple slice of Education uh we don't see policy going towards the things that we know actually Can be effective and so your the answer to your question for me is how can we as a society both sit around and lament the lack of progress and also not be willing to do whatever it takes to solve these things in our generation okay okay I want to dig more though even though it's the last question you said education there's others though right sure um we need to really figure out how do we uh increase the you

know the non-cognitive skills uh like resilience and uh grit Those things really those were the in my Mobility thing those were the next next ones we also have a sense of you know uh how to do healthc care in a more efficient and and better way I mean I'll come back on the show heal healthare is a whole different topic but you get the Point Health Care criminal justice education um and you know non-cognitive skills which is included in education we have the social science not is not perfect by any means but we know enough

To make fundamental progress and we just can't get past ourselves and that is extremely extremely frustrating well Roland we would be delighted to have you back on to talk about some of those things next time but for now follow us over to locals where we continue the conversation with your questions