In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, protests, looting and anger boiled over the streets of Boston, a city that has played host to both abolitionists and vicious race riots. At Boston University, black students demanded action to address racism on campus.
The university responded dramatically. A few days later, it announced that it had recruited Ibram
The plans were ambitious. Dr. Kendi would lead a new Center for Anti-Racist Research. The university would develop bachelor’s and master’s programs in the field of anti-racism. Within months, millions of people flocked to a center whose mission, Dr. Kendi, it would be to “solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequality and injustice.”
Now, barely three years later, the center is being downsized. More than half of the 36 employees were abruptly told last week that they were being fired. The center’s budget will also be halved. The planned training courses have not been realized. And the center’s news site called “The Emancipator” is no longer a partnership with The Boston Globe.
The reorganization is partly a sign of the times. Enthusiasm for funding racial justice causes has waned as Mr. Floyd’s killing has faded from media attention and conservatives have focused their anger on efforts to diversify companies and institutions and teach race in schools.
But the center’s struggle comes amid deeper concerns about its management and focus, and questions about whether Dr. Kendi – whose fame has brought him new projects, from an ESPN series to children’s books about racist ideas in America – took charge of the newly created institute. needed. Before the university founded the center, 41-year-old Mr. Kendi had never led an organization anywhere near this size.
On Wednesday, Boston University announced it is launching an investigation into employee complaints, including questions about the center’s management culture and faculty and staff experience with it, as well as its grant management practices.
Dr. Kendi said in an interview that he has made “the painful decision” to reduce the size and mission of the program in an effort to ensure its future, even though the center is currently financially sound. The university said Friday that the center has raised nearly $55 million and that the endowment contains approximately $30 million, with another $17.5 million in reserves.
The majority of donations came from pledges made during the first year, and the university reported $5.4 million in cash payments and pledges in the most recent fiscal year.
Despite the university’s statement that it would look into the center’s management, the university’s interim president, Kenneth Freeman, expressed strong support for Dr. Kendi. He said the professor came to the university early in the summer with his idea for the reorganized center. .
“We continue to have confidence in Dr. Kendi and support them,” said Mr Freeman.
But several former staff and faculty members, expressing anger and bitterness, said the cause of the center’s problems was unrealistic expectations, fueled by the rapid flow of money, the initial excitement and the pressure to produce too much, too quickly, even as there were hiring delays due to the pandemic. Others gave Dr. Kendi himself is to blame for what they describe as an imperious leadership style. And they questioned both the center’s management of the subsidies and its productivity.
“Relative to the amount of cash and donations that came in, the proceeds were minuscule,” said Saida U. Grundy, a sociology professor at Boston University and feminist scholar who was once associated with the center.
The unrest comes as Dr. Kendi is increasingly confronted with attacks from outside. In his books he claims that there is no middle ground when it comes to race: everyone is either racist or actively anti-racist. And he suggests that all disparities in black people’s outcomes and achievements are the result of racism. That has drawn criticism from conservatives ranging from some black intellectuals to Republican-led state governments, which have banned his books from their classrooms and libraries.
Dr. Kendi acknowledged that the fundraising environment for the center is “not like it was in 2020 when this was still popular.” But he added that the center still has committed funders.
And calling the changes to the center a “major pivot,” he said, “I really had to make sure that the center still exists in twenty years, in fifty years, in a hundred years.”
The center’s new model, said Dr. Kendi, will be the first of its kind: a fellowship program for anti-racist intellectuals who will spend nine months at the university and participate in public events while conducting their own research.
Dr. Kendi was a professor at the University of Florida in 2016 when his book “Stamped From the Beginning,” a history of racist thinking in America, was a surprise National Book Award winner. A subsequent book, ‘How to Be an Antiracist’, became a bestseller in 2019.
Dr. Kendi was both a public influencer and a scholar and became a flashpoint in the culture wars with his idea that to be an anti-racist you must first recognize that you are a racist.
Dr. Kendi came to Boston at both an opportune time – in the midst of 2020’s racial reckoning – and a challenging one – in the early months of the Covid pandemic.
Dr. Kendi acknowledged getting off to a rough start in the midst of the pandemic — along with some conflict among staff members who had strong and differing ideas about the center’s focus — and said he was proud of the center’s work to date.
The center says its key initiatives and achievements include The Emancipator, the National Anti-Racist Book Festivals; policy conferences on bigotry and racial classifications; Ten amicus briefs filed in lawsuits involving racial justice and an anti-racist technology initiative.
Even as the cuts were announced, the center was preparing this weekend for a meeting of 60 journalists covering the race. But from the outside, the center’s operations appeared to be struggling. Parts of the website had been removed.
And the center’s work has, perhaps inevitably, become synonymous with Dr. Kendi.
Even as he oversaw the center, along with a staff of administrators and academics that at one point numbered about 43 people, his business franchise has continued to grow. And some worry that he has taken on far more work than can be done while running the center.
In publishing, he has produced children’s books based on his theme. “Antiracist Baby” is aimed at young children, and “How to Be a Young Antiracist” is aimed at 12- to 17-year-olds. He has also published a guide for parents, “How to Raise an Antiracist.” His other children’s books include adaptations of works by Zora Neale Hurston. He is a contributor to The Atlantic.
While on air, he has hosted his own podcast while also appearing as a commentator on CBS and cable television. He has founded his own production company, Maroon Visions, which was recently involved in an ESPN+ series about racism in sports, “Skin in the Game,” which premiered Wednesday.
He teaches an undergraduate course at BU on anti-racism and speaks regularly at universities and conferences across the country, sometimes sparking controversy.
Dr. Grundy said that despite Dr. Kendi’s busy schedule, “Ibram did not want to give up any power.”
And in academia, where popular success can often lead to resistance, his work has been criticized by some scholars who question its academic rigor, as well as by some on the left who worry that it may height has been influenced by the major donors who helped create the center.
Spencer Piston, a political science professor who worked in the center’s policy office, criticized the university’s original decision to involve Dr. Kendi, which he viewed as a substitute for addressing more specific student complaints — including criticism of campus police and police. lack of faculty diversity.
“It’s a failure of a certain kind of corporatist university response to that same struggle,” said Dr. Piston.
Within the first year of Dr. Kendi had received more than $43 million in pledges and donations, including an anonymous donation of $25 million and $10 million from Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter.
The money flowed in, but new staff were slow to come on board as the fledgling company tried to work remotely.
More than one former employee complained about the way grants were handled, including conflicts of interest or misleading promises to donors. The center’s staff also became embroiled in a political battle of sorts: a debate over what anti-racism should look like.
Dr. For example, Piston wondered whether the center wanted to advance the interests of donors at the expense of interacting with community groups. He cited the participation of the CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a treatment for sickle cell disease, at a center conference on public health. The company’s foundation is a donor.
Phillipe Copeland, a professor in the university’s Department of Social Work who also worked at the center until his resignation in June, said some faculty had been upset about Dr. Kendi, what about Dr.’s work? Copeland – made developing the graduate program in anti-racism studies – difficult.
“There were some bad feelings about the interactions people had with Dr. Kendi, which made some people not want to participate and not support what we were doing,” said Dr. Copeland. “I’ve heard that often.”
In an interview, Dr. Kendi said critics used the situation “to settle old scores and show that I am a problem or that anti-racism is a problem.”
“Unfortunately, we are living in such a polarized, hateful reactionary moment,” he said.
Colbi Edmonds reporting contributed.