Boston University is preparing to close the Center for Antiracist Research as its founding director, Ibram X. Kendi, leaves to lead a similar program at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
The Center for Antiracist Research will officially close on June 30 when the center’s charter expires, Boston University announced Thursday. Until then, all twelve employees will continue working.
Meanwhile, Kendi will be joining Howard University as the director of its new Institute for Advanced Study. The institute will conduct research related to the “global African Diaspora, including inquiry into race, technology, racism, climate change, and disparities,” Howard University announced separately.
Kendi was working at American University in 2020 when he was tapped by Boston University.
Best known for his 2019 book How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi founded the controversial center at Boston University in July 2020 following the death of George Floyd, which sparked a wave of racial-justice riots that summer.
Since its founding, the center created a COVID Racial Data Tracker that outlined the pandemic’s disproportionate effects on black people and launched the Emancipator, a digital magazine named after the 19th-century abolitionist newspaper.
The Center for Antiracist Research drew attention in September 2023 when it suddenly laid off 19 employees, almost half of its workforce. Kendi said the major layoffs were part of a strategy to keep the center running in the long term.
That strategy ultimately failed, as made evident by its announced closure this week.
Around the same time as the layoffs, the founder faced accusations of exploiting workers and mismanaging the center’s financial resources. BU Today said the layoffs happened because public support for the center’s work “shifted,” and financial contributions were “waning.”
In its nearly five years of existence, the antiracism venture raised more than $50 million in funding from donors, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who donated $10 million to the cause. Despite the generous funds, only two new research papers had been produced by the time of the employee layoffs. The exact count of total research papers is unclear.
“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 Thursday.
“To all the faculty, staff, administrators, students, supporters, and Boston community members, I feel honored to have been able to do this work with you over the last five years,” he added. “I am departing for an opportunity I could not pass up, but what connected us at CAR remains, especially during this precarious time. Our commitment to building an equitable and just society.”
The center’s closure and Kendi’s departure come as President Donald Trump roots out diversity, equity, and inclusion practices within the federal government and threatens to do the same in the private sector if corporations and universities fail to abandon the leftist ideology.
Taking the hint from the Republican administration, universities are halting research projects and shuttering offices related to DEI, according to the Wall Street Journal. Public higher-education institutions are reversing course because they could lose federal funding if they continue maintaining their diversity and inclusion efforts. It remains to be seen how Kendi responds to the cultural shift.