Roland Gerhard Fryer, Jr. (born June 4, 1977) is an American economist and the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University.He also maintains offices at the National Bureau of Economic Research and W. E. B. Du Bois Institute. In 2007, at age 30, he became the youngest African-American to ever receive tenure at Harvard.He was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.Fryer is widely regarded to be one of black America and Harvard's rising stars, having published numerous economics-related papers in prominent academic journals over the past few years.He is the recipient of the 2015 John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge."