So that may be why Fryer — as a 25 - year - old newly minted Ph.D. who had just come to Harvard to be part of the
Society of Fellows — reacted so viscerally when a reporter from a major newspaper threatened to out exactly how exceptional he was: a man whose family
members were in prison for dealing crack, who had grown up in a profoundly unstable home but had made it to the
pinnacle of academia anyway.