The scandal at BU’s now-folded Center for Antiracist Research, where its head, Ibram X. Kendi, burned through $30 million in grant money in three years with almost nothing to show for it, and where more than half of the staff was unceremoniously fired in late September, has not died down. And the scandal goes beyond Ibram X. Kendi, terrible as he is, to a wider ideological corruption that puts “antiracism” at the center of everything that is taught at BU. After three years and $43 million since its founding, this Center for Antiracist Research produced nothing of value. With so many complaints about a “grifter” at the top, one hopes that investigators and prosecutors will be looking into where all those antiracist millions went. “Ibram X. Kendi’s anti-racism center folds after millions in donations,” by Dominic Green, Washington Examiner, September 29, 2023:
Race is the American disease. There is no cure for the facts of the past, but you can buy absolution for feeling bad about them. That was the bargain sold to white liberals by Ibram X. Kendi, the superstar theorist of “anti-racism.” Last week, his Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University crashed amid allegations of mismanagement. The university has launched an “inquiry” into the whereabouts of millions of dollars in donor cash. Some bargain.
“I don’t know where the money is,” says Saida Grundy, a BU professor of African American and Black Diaspora studies. Professor Grundy doubled as the center’s “Assistant Director of Narrative” then resigned, complaining about “exploitative” working hours. Her successor, Phillipe Copeland, called the firings “an act of employment violence and trauma” and demanded an explanation “how mass layoffs are ‘antiracist.’” These are not serious people, but they hold serious positions in what used to be a serious proposition, the American academy. A year’s study with these stellar minds is also a bargain: just $83,278….
More on this continuing saga of fashionable idiocy at BU and at the wider academic world that has joined the “antiracism” juggernaut can be found here: “How Ibram X. Kendi Broke Boston University,” by David Decosimo, Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2023:
The debacle that is Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research is about far more than its founder, Ibram X. Kendi. It is about a university, caught up in cultural hysteria, subordinating itself to ideology.
After suddenly laying off over half his employees last week and with his center producing almost nothing since its founding, Mr. Kendi is now facing an investigation and harsh criticism from numerous colleagues complaining of financial mismanagement, dysfunctional leadership, and failure to honor obligations attached to its millions in grant money.
“Such an outcome was entirely predictable. In June 2020, the university hired Mr. Kendi, created and endowed his center, and canceled all “classes, meetings, and events” for a quasi-religious “Day of Collective Engagement” on “Racism and Antiracism, Our Realities and Our Roles,” during which Mr. Kendi and his colleagues were treated as sages….
Ibram X. Kendi failed to deliver to his donors the results of “antiracism research” that, after #30 million spent over three years , they had a right to expect. Instead, much of the money went to glorifying the already published work of one man — Ibram X. Kendi. For the many failures at the Center for Antiracist Research, Kendi took no blame, but instead scapegoated the staff, firing more than half of them. Professor Decosimo argues that Kendi is part of larger, university-wide program, where a meddling administration insisted that “antiracism” be at the heart of every course, and that courses, syllabi, and lectures be monitored to make sure that the instructors are complying with this “antiracist” ideology that was placed at the center of everything done at BU. And BU is not alone. Though BU leads all the rest, the same madness can be found in colleges and universities across the country.
Perhaps the scandal at BU’s Center for Antiracist Research will embolden others to criticize not just the deplorable Kendi and his deplorable Center, and not just BU, but the whole idiotic and immoral “antiracism” industry that has spread its malignant tentacles throughout campuses across America. Were that to be the result, we should thank Ibram X. Kendi for being so outrageous in his behavior, so lavish in his spending, so meager in his research results, so bullying in his treatment of the Center’s staff, that he has provided the opening sane people needed to hold up for scathing criticism, as Professor Decosimo does here, the insistence by the current BU administration of putting “antiracism” at the “center of everything we do.”
Rick says
“…burned through $30 million in grant money in three years with almost nothing to show for it”
Nothing like the fiasco of Boston U and its surrender to the race hustlers proves the motto so true:
“Go Woke Go Broke”
somehistory says
This fool is self-important and others allow him to pretend that he has something valuable to offer. Thery are all fools.
He’s a waste of time and money. But in today’s climate….and the change in values to zero…there is nothing to surprise.
Kepha says
He is an enterprising con man who sniffed out some easy marks.
James Lincoln says
Boston University: yet another woke university that alumni should not donate to.
Not a single penny.
Lisel Sipes says
I was accepted there. I changed my mind and went to another school. I am glad.
Huapakechi says
This is what happens when the “enlightened” left takes it into it’s collective empty heads that they are so much smarter than the people they consider their social inferiors. They’ll fall for any scheme that purports to damage a working capitalist economic system and advance historically failed socialism.
OLD GUY says
This is what happens when you allow your enemy to “buy” into your country. Just look at all the foreign money in our colleges and universities endowment funds and anti American professors teaching our children. Or look at all the farm land being sold to China. Not to mention the number of foreign owned corporations and major property sites owned by foreigners across the country. You don’t have to defeat us on the battle field, we’ll sell our country to you.
George says
Looks like anti racism hadn’t caught up to the accounting curriculum at BU, but accounting sure has caught up with Kendi.
Scotsman48 says
”The biggest danger to the Negro in America today (1965) comes not from the KKK but rather from the White Liberal who seems to believe the Negro cannot better himself without the help of the White Liberal”…. Malcolm X.
This ”anti racist” jive is never pointed at any other race than the Caucasians whereas I have met very racist Negroes in America, and Africa and very racist Arab muslims and very racist Asians, Chinese, Japanese,Thai.
However listening to this wee self righteous moron with the creepy smile and awful hair one would think racism was a creation of the people of European Heritage.
He needs to get out into the World a bit more.