Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner, and today we've got a bonus episode for you.

It is an update of a 2022 interview we did with Roland Friar, a much acclaimed and frequently controversial economist at Harvard.

When we spoke, Friar had recently returned from a two-year suspension, which you will hear

about in the episode.

The person who suspended him was Claudine Gay, who at the time was the Dean of Harvard's

faculty of arts and sciences. Gay went on to become president of Harvard, but then she famously

resigned, amidst plagiarism charges and criticism of Harvard's response to

anti-Semitic demonstrations. But the reason we thought you might like to hear this episode now

is because it follows naturally from the two-part series we just published on the Rooney Rule.

That is the National Football League policy that was designed to increase diversity among coaches,

and the Rooney Rule has since been adopted by many firms and institutions

outside of sports. Roland Friar, who is black, has his own thoughts about how firms and institutions

have handled diversity hiring and you'll hear about that, too.

We have updated facts and figures as necessary.

As always, thanks for listening. In 2005 I wrote a piece for the New York Times magazine called

Tured a Unified Theory of Black America. It was a profile of a young Harvard economist named Roland Friar whose journey to

Harvard was beyond surprising, beyond unpredictable. Given his background, it may have seemed impossible, and yet there he was.

A lot of things happened to get Friar into the upper echelons of academia, and even more has happened since much of it controversial.

How does Friar describe his research agenda today?

Trying to make black America happier, wealthier, healthier, more educated.

That's all I've ever tried to do.

And I refuse to lie to them.

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