Boston University Calls It Quits on Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research
1st February 2025
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.
Another race grifter bites the dust….