Kendi to join Howard University, where he will lead a new antiracist research center
Boston University’s much-maligned Center for Antiracist Research will be shut down this coming summer as its founder, Ibram X. Kendi, prepares to jump ship to Howard University.
Kendi had high hopes for his Center for Antiracist Research, saying the $50 million project would “solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequality and injustice” when he launched the initiative at the height of the “defund the police” movement in 2020. But the center produced hardly any research five years into the project, and Boston University now says it wants nothing more to do with it when its charter expires on June 30.
Kendi’s center was hamstrung by allegations of financial malfeasance under his watch. By 2023, financial contributions to the center had largely dried up as it produced only two original pieces of research and had long since stopped collecting information for its “Racial Data Lab,” which Kendi claimed years earlier would “give us the ability to see the hotspots of racial inequity in real time in this country,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. A Boston University audit ultimately cleared the center of any illegality in the misuse of its $50 million endowment. In September 2023, the think tank slashed a third of its workforce in a restructuring effort that Kendi said would ensure its viability for decades to come.
Boston University ultimately deemed the project unworthy of saving, announcing Thursday it would shut down the center and lay off its 12 remaining staffers on June 30.
“Despite all the headwinds we faced as a new organization founded during the pandemic and the intense backlash over critical race theory, I am very proud of all we envisioned, all we created, all we learned, all we achieved—the community we built, the people we helped and inspired,” Kendi said in a statement.
As for Kendi, who charges $20,000 for speaking engagements, his lucrative “antiracism” career will continue at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he will lead its newly established Howard Institute for Advanced Study.
Kendi’s new initiative bears a remarkable similarity to the Center for Antiracist Research.
Kendi said on Threads the Howard Institute for Advanced Study will continue the scholarly legacy of the Center for Antiracist Research. It will take over publication of the center’s digital magazine, The Emancipator, and will “enhance the general public’s understanding of racism and evidence-based antiracist solutions through research, collaboration, public lectures, workshops, and outreach programs.”
“This is the most fulfilling career choice I have ever made,” Kendi wrote on Threads. “I can’t wait to get started.”
It’s unclear what Boston University will do with the remaining funds in the Center for Antiracist Research’s endowment. Following its 2023 audit, the university said the center’s endowment still held $20 million, only $1.2 million of which could be spent annually.
It’s also unclear whether Kendi’s departure from Boston University will have any impact on a $600,000 mortgage the university provided to a trust controlled by Kendi’s brother-in-law, Macharia Edmonds, in September 2020, just weeks after the launch of the Center for Antiracist Research.
The mortgage, which was provided to an unnamed professor, helped cover the down payment for a $4.56 million luxury penthouse triplex that boasts the “best of sophisticated Boston living,” the Free Beacon reported. Boston University won’t say which professor obtained the loan, however, Edmonds’s only apparent affiliation with the school is through Kendi, who is married to his sister, Sadiqa, also a professor at Boston University.
Boston University did not return a request for comment.
“We thank Dr. Kendi and the center’s staff and affiliated faculty for their contributions to Boston University. The University wishes Dr. Kendi well in his next chapter,” Boston University provost Gloria Waters said in a statement Thursday.
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