Boston University Launches ‘Inquiry’ Into Ibram Kendi’s Collapsing ‘Anti-Racist’ Think Tank for Possible Mismanagement of Funds
“Multiple former staff members allege that a mismanagement of funds, high turnover rate and general disorganization have plagued the Center since its inception.”
Things keep getting worse for Ibram Kendi. Just a matter of days ago, his ‘anti-racist’ think tank at Boston University laid off a third of its staff. Then employees started accusing him of exploiting them.
Now the university is taking a hard look at the organization’s funding. There were millions of dollars involved here, and people are wondering how things went haywire so quickly. Even the liberal media is taking notice of this.
This is from the Boston Globe:
Following layoffs, Boston University announces ‘inquiry’ into Ibram Kendi’s Antiracist Center
Boston University announced Wednesday it would conduct an “inquiry” into Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research after complaints emerged about the center’s culture and financial management.
The assessment comes the week after Kendi, a celebrity author, scholar of race, and antiracism advocate laid off more than half the center’s staff.
The complaints, a BU spokesperson said, “focused on the center’s culture and its grant management practices.” The inquiry announced Wednesday represents a broadening of a previous “examination” of the center’s grant management practices, according to the spokesperson, Rachel Lapal Cavallario.
Kendi “takes strong exception to the allegations made in recent complaints and media reports,” she said.
Since its announced launch in June 2020, just days after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the center has raised tens of millions of dollars from tech entrepreneurs, Boston-area corporations, and thousands of small donors.
Boston University’s student newspaper, the Daily Free Press, is also covering it:
Amid mass layoffs, BU Center for Antiracist Research accused of mismanagement of funds, disorganization
Boston University hired Ibram X. Kendi to lead its new Center for Antiracist Research in 2020, a year marked by a global pandemic and nationwide racial tension.
Three years later, after at least $43 million in grants and gifts and what sources say has been an underwhelming output of research, the Center for Antiracist Research laid off almost all of its staff last week.
Multiple former staff members allege that a mismanagement of funds, high turnover rate and general disorganization have plagued the Center since its inception.
The $43 million, according to 2021 budget records obtained by The Daily Free Press, includes general support, such as the $10 million from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, as well as donations for specific projects.
One of the big problems here is that despite having mountains of cash in funding, the center hasn’t really produced very much.
The Washington Free Beacon reported:
Ibram Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research Hasn’t Produced Any Research
Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research made headlines this month when it announced it would axe a third of its workforce. But those layoffs may not have much of an impact, considering the center has hardly produced any original research at all.
The Boston University-based center has produced just two original research papers since its founding in June 2020, according to a Washington Free Beacon review. Output from the center’s scholars largely consists of op-eds or commentary posted on the center’s website. The group’s plans to “maintain the nation’s largest online database of racial inequity data in the United States” quickly fizzled out, and the database has been dormant since 2021.
Chris Rufo makes a great point about all of this.
Boston University is investigating Ibram Kendi's "antiracism" center, following allegations that he mismanaged grant funding, failed to deliver key projects, and unleashed "employment violence" on staff.
This is what happens when DEI replaces merit as the guiding principle. pic.twitter.com/Dd1ZWd6zdy
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 21, 2023
Ibram Kendi might have blocked me on X, but he will not be able to block the investigation into the alleged mismanagement of $30 million at his "antiracism" center.
It's looking like the BLM scam: raise cash, produce nothing, drain the accounts, then watch it collapse. pic.twitter.com/Lh1Jl0NAOw
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) September 21, 2023
It really does look like a massive grift.
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BU will study and study like a Blue Ribbon Panel in Congress does until the story goes away..
They will try wait it out.
“allege that a mismanagement of funds, high turnover rate and general disorganization have plagued the Center ”
Exactly what is expected for an Affirmative operation. Graft and incompetence.
AA or now DEI is as necessary to academia as oxygen and blood. A dietary supplement for status seeking administrators.
Who could have possibly seen this coming?
All of us!
😉
Yes, but… usually these things take months to unravel, like BLM, FTX, Theranos. (Or, in Biden’s case, over a decade.)
This is like Kendi got out of bed Thursday and was flattened by a guided missile.
Alrernate headline:
“Boston University forced to launch an inquiry into Kendi’s center”
Subheader:
“Panel promises that they will find ‘mistakes were made’ by unnamed persons while burying as much corruption and grift as possible”
and further
“Boston U promises ongoing investigation will continue until original story practically
forgotten before releasing any results, hoping to confirm that mistakes were made sometime in Q4 2025 but they strongly believe in Kendi’s mission even if he was let down by those around him his mission against racism will continue (just probably somewhere else and with less money)”
and finally
“Boston U President confident that enough fussing and hand-wringing will be forthcoming that no serious actions or changes are required ; Kendi promises in the future the center ‘will do better’ at providing a fig leaf of research as cover for his grift and anyone who criticizes the center or the resort after the report is released will be demonized promptly as racist”
Ordinary financial fraud and deception isn’t what society has to learn to spot. It’s the original stupidity of stupid ideas.
$30 million would have provided a whole lot of scholarships to under-privileged students supposedly the victims of racism. I wonder if the Board of Trustees of BU will be discussing something like that – cutting out the graft middlemen?
Wait! You’re saying that guy just might be a massive fraud and a grifter?
Who coulda POSSIBLY known?
He is clearly a racist.
He proudly shouts it from the rooftops, and somehow this seems to be ok with the left.
When it comes from black people, it’s not racism but rather “racial pride.”
Only blacks are allowed to be proud of their race.
Only Hispanics are allowed to be proud of their heritage.
Only non-normative sexual predilections are allowed to be proud of their sexuality (which of course must be shoved in everyone’s face and down their throats).
If you’re a white/European heterosexual who is proud of his race or ethnic heritage, you’re clearly a dangerous “white supremacist.” Shut up and go sit in the corner until they say you may enter into polite society once again – if they let you.
Put a black guy with a racist chip on his shoulder in charge of MILLIONS and this is the inevitable outcome. We all know exactly where that money went. We don’t need an “investigation” to know that. And really, you’d think that Boston University had records of all expenditures from this “anti-racist think-tank”. So what’s there to investigate, exactly. Just pull the financials from the University system and see where all this money went End of Investigation. But it doesn’t really matter what conclusions the university comes to in the end. The money is gone. They will never recover any of it. It’s gone. Kendi will not be held responsible for the “mismanagement” and will simply walk away unscathed to continue his race baiting hustle somewhere else. If I’ve learned one thing over the last two or so decades is that blacks are never held accountable for their illegal acts and actions. This is no different. Nothing will happen to Kendi. Guaranteed.
BU’s “inquiry” into Kendi’s finances will fully exonerate Kendi, and reveal that the inquiry was an example of systemic white racism. BU’s enlightened faculty will demand that the persons initially urging the inquiry must be fired, canceled and prosecuted.
. . . Just a guess.
Surprise move. A white BU Administrator is put in charge.
A really, REALLY bigoted man I worked with years ago referred to such as “white man’s work”.
Crushed under the weight of his own grift? And how very racist of BU to be investigating this…
LOL. They’re not churning out all of that highly important “antiracist research” … whatever the hell that might be. I’d like to have a short look at the “research” they did manage to do and/or publish. Pretty much 99.999% of the “research” published in sociology is less related to academic study than authentic cowboy poetry is.
Antiracist research … what a sick, sad joke. That any university would entertain this mockery of academia is a sad commentary on the state of the academy these days.
“a sad commentary on the state of the academy these days.”
BU granted AOC a degree in Economics and International Relations… cum laude.
It’s hard to set the fuckup bar much higher than that. But there’s always tomorrow!
(At least it wasn’t AOC who celebrated the “US alliance with the Republic of North Korea.” But crying at an “international border” that actually was a parking lot fence is real close.)
Not over the lies he’s spreading but over the fact someone didn’t get paid.
One day people will look back at this crap and be amazed that anyone actually bought into it just like the Russian hoax. But unfortunately, just like the Russian hoax, no one will be punished for their behavior.
“There is another class of citizen of the Negro race. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
If he wasn’t so full of himself he would have consulted with The Justice Brothers to see how the grift really worked.
Karma…it’s a “you know”.
Why did this happen? Because BU is like any other University which survives with “indirect funds,” which is a tax/surcharge on grants that the University administers. IIRC, the normal rate is something around 60 +/- 10%. So if $30M were signed over to BU to administer, that would leave $18.75M as an account used by the program and $11.25M would go to the BU administration to provide facilities, etc. Etc frequently includes lavish office furnishings. I know of one case where it even extended to kitchen tile at a Dean’s residence.
Administrators are addicted to this money. I recall an incident about 25 years ago where “legal” at the medical school announced that they were now the intellectual rights property owners of everything that an employee came up with, regardless of whose time or support was involved. That lasted a few days before they pulled it way way back, but it was a perfect example of what they wanted to get away with if they could.
Now the really interesting part will happen when and if they start digging into how this money was actually spent, and whether it violated any conditions placed on the center. There might also be some performance clauses. I would be both surprised and disappointed if that money from Twatter arrived without conditions. Grifter A never likes it when grifter B draws attention to what both of them are doing.
And in how many microseconds it will take for any of the possible conditions to be deemed racist.
Kendi is a documented RACIST who blames all his problems in life on white people.
BLM is such a fraud. There will be NO REPARATIONS.