Ibram X. Kendi’s Antiracist Center Under Inquiry at Boston University
Scholar, speaker, and author of “How to be an Antiracist” Ibran X. Kendi, formerly known as Ibram Henry Rogers, has been under scrutiny for his Center for Antiracist Research’s (CAR) “colossal waste of millions of dollars,” at Boston University (BU).
The university announced an inquiry into the center’s “management culture” after employees were laid off in masses amid allegations of mismanagement and exploitation; however, several outlets have noted that the real offense was the center’s waste of nearly 43 million donation dollars.
“We are expanding our inquiry to include the Center’s management culture and the faculty and staff’s experience with it,” Colin Riley, a spokesperson for BU, said. “Boston University and Dr. Kendi believe strongly in the Center’s mission, and … he takes strong exception to the allegations made in recent complaints and media reports.”
Anonymous complaints sent to the university as far back as 2021 alleged high-level employees often retaliated and discriminated against others in the workplace, according to the Dail Free Press.
According to the Boston Globe, even his assistant “director of narrative,” BU associate professor of sociology and African American & Black diaspora studies, Saida Grundy, said the center “lacked structure and she was forced to work hours beyond what was reasonable for the pay she received.”
“We felt disposable,” one anonymous CAR manager told the Daily Free Press following the layoffs. “I’m surprised that there’s still no official statement. Actually, it adds to the disrespect, in my opinion, almost as if it can be kept under wraps.”
The Globe goes on to crystallize the real questions surrounding the department, most of which revolve around how an up-and-coming center for diversity, equity, and inclusion established opportunistically during the turbulent summer of 2020 could already be firing people despite its accrued grants and donations of tens of millions of dollars. Philanthropists as prominent as Jeff Bezos and Jack Dorsey donated to the center alongside biotech companies and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Phillipe Copeland, a clinical associate professor in the School of Social Work and former assistant director of the Narrative office at CAR, said, “If something was not sufficiently revenue-producing, then it wasn’t for CAR’s time.”
Questions raised on how exactly the center used the funds granted to it lend weight to disgruntled, dismissed former employee’s observations that Kendi was, at best, untalented at managing the center.
Spencer Piston, an associate professor of political science, who works as the faculty lead in the Policy office at the Center, “It’s pretty hard for me to imagine they blew through $30 million in two years.” Piston noted however that “There’s been a lack of transparency about how much money comes in and how it’s spent from the beginning, which comports with a larger culture of secrecy.”
Companies such as TJ Maxx’s foundation, Stop & Shop, and Peloton also donated over one million dollars to the center.
The vaunted assistant director of narrative, Grundy, went on to say that the funds wastefully provided to the Antiracist Research Center could have been better utilized as academic scholarships for black students — a statement that’s hard to contest, given how sloppily the center appears to have been managed.
It’s difficult not to feel a sense of amusement, as the preening beacon of leftist virtue-signaling goes down in a cloud of overwrought allegations; as anti-critical race theory activist Chris Rufo pointed out “Woke-on-woke recriminations rising. Kendi the new oppressor.”
