Not all Ivy League Blacks are a Protected Class
How the stories of Claudine Gay and Roland Fryer touch on Israel-Palestine
Claudine Gay is the first African-American president in Harvard’s 387-year history. Roland Fryer is a brilliant African-American economist whose Harvard teaching career came to a screeching halt after 2016. How their lives intersected is a complex story of Black America that touches on everything from education to police brutality to Black Lives Matter (BLM) to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Understanding the intersection of Gay and Fryer is key to understanding both the devastating impact of manipulative, progressive politics on the Black community as well as how the anti-Israel BLM duped so many people.
For those who did not already know of Claudine Gay, she became much more recognizable after she and other Ivy League presidents appeared before Congress to discuss campus antisemitism two weeks ago. Gay, Liz Magill (UPenn), and Sally Kornbluth (MIT) stunned millions of people when they each refused to identify calls for Jewish genocide (the elimination of the state of Israel) as antisemitism. However, Gay’s role in the matter touched off an entirely different, ongoing discussion of plagiarism, the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) deception, and anti-White racism. Gay is heavily implicated in each and Harvard is fiercely defending her — for now.
Roland Fryer was a rising star at Harvard whose intellect and charisma were so prominent, (initially) even his detractors found it difficult to attack him. Fryer’s primary stated focus was in the field of education, specifically, identifying the real causes of Black public school underperformance. In short, Fryer consistently proved what others like Thomas Sowell and the late Walter Williams preached for decades: Overall, the public school system is failing Black youth. Fryer’s data and fact-based findings were (and still are) a challenge to all status-quo public school apologists. This includes the teachers union which is simply a branch of the Democratic Party. (It should be stated that neither I nor IBSI are aware of Roland Fryer’s political leanings or Party affiliation — a fact that will loom much larger momentarily).
It was after the media-celebrated police shootings of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Philando Castile in Minneapolis-St. Paul, etc. that Fryer decided to focus his data and fact-based efforts to uncover what was happening to Black men in America. After months of exhaustive research along with his team, Fryer concluded — as tragic as each of the shooting incidents was — the Open-Season-on-Black-Men-by-White-Cops narrative was false. What’s more, Fryer found that police were more likely to shoot White suspects than Black ones. In July 2016, The New York Times published Fryer’s findings in an article entitled Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings. All hell broke loose.
Fellow Black Harvard faculty members like Claudine Gay and Larry Bobo had already been critical of Fryer’s work in education, calling Fryer out both in their classrooms and in articles. But after Fryer dared challenge the leftist narrative that White cops were out to kill Black men — especially unarmed Black men — he had to be stopped. To fully understand what happened to Roland Fryer after his 2016 report on law enforcement, there are two sources (both videos) that must be accessed:
When Fryer’s report was published, the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI) also shared his findings for two reasons:
As leaders within the Black community, the then-all-consuming issue of police brutality against Black people demanded our commentary
BLM, which IBSI had already identified as a fraudulent, pro-Palestinian organization, was using the prevailing false narrative to amass even more power and money for itself
The lies told by the media, progressive politicians, and BLM were the currency exchange of people like Claudine Gay who, though embattled, will likely weather this current storm of controversy in some form or another. After all, she’s a progressive Black woman who will be given every consideration, deserving or not. Roland Fryer, an honest academic who, in his words, “goes where the data takes” him, was not given every consideration. Why? Because the data took him to the truth, and the truth was (and is) anathema to ideologues and demagogues. The bitter irony here is that, especially post-2016, BLM went on to become the most iconic ‘human rights’ organization in the world with access to billions of dollars, and used its influence, among other things, to demonize Israel and the Jewish people. There is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that the 51% of Americans ages 18-24 who believe that Israel should be given to Hamas have been influenced in some way by BLM propaganda.
This article could go on for thousands of words, but its brevity serves as an announcement. As IBSI Founder & CEO, I will unpack what this Harvard-Black leaders episode truly means and what may very well be in store for the future state of Black-Jewish and Africa-Israel relations — as well as the US-Israel relationship. This will be a live online conversation exclusively for Africa-Israel Weekly premium subscribers — Wednesday, December 27th @ 12PM Eastern/9AM Pacific/7PM Central Africa & Israel. (The original date was Thursday, December 28th, Douglass Leadership Institute President, Dean Nelson recently passed away and IBSI staff will be attending his funeral next Thursday).
Please mark your calendars and join us. If you’re not yet a premium Africa-Israel Weekly subscriber, you can become one for as little as $5 a month.
VIDEO
It's so important to point out the situation. Harvard and academia like diversity of skin color, not diversity of thought.
It is too bad that the black community does not rally around people like Roland Fryer but instead lets race hucksters like Claudine Gay take center stage.