This is a very exciting place, ... The potential to do something here seemed to be really quite great and I was persuaded after talking with the leadership at the University ... that the kind of thing that I wanted to do on race and inequality would be perfect here. It just seemed too good of an opportunity to pass up.

That just happened overnight because of the exposure and people being interested in those ideas, ... It just came my way - it really wasn't something that I sought, but when the opportunity presented itself, I did take it.

It was a terrible thing, ... The bottom line is that I was involved with a young woman and it went sour, and some allegations which were not true about me assaulting her were made.

One day, I was reading the New York Times and there was a front page story about Simmons and the Plan for Academic Enrichment, ... So that just got me to thinking, so I picked up the phone and asked if anybody was interested down there.

What I was wrong about was not realizing that in my saying those things in the way I said them had political consequences, ... It wasn't just a matter about being right. Being right about something isn't good enough. You also have to be smart about it.

The graduate course will be going through the theories of inequality, inequalities of all kinds - why some countries are slower to grow than others, why some regions within countries are left behind, why some groups, whether racial, ethnic or whatever (are left behind),

I was once considered one of the pre-eminent black conservatives in the past, but now I'm more of a black progressive and I'm in the right place,

I was a hot commodity, ... Being African-American didn't hurt me - I was one of the leading young theoretical economists of the generation.

I got my life back together and I haven't looked back,

The facilities are magnificent, the campus is beautiful - I even like living four days a week in Providence, which I never thought I was going to do,