Days after former employees slammed Ibram X. Kendi’s “antiracism” center for laying off staff, Boston University said it is investigating the center.
The university will launch an “inquiry” into the Center for Antiracist Research following staffers’ complaints about the center’s leadership and financial management amid the layoffs, the Boston Globe reported.
A spokesperson for the school said the complaints “focused on the center’s culture and its grant management practices.” The inquiry will expand on a past investigation into the center’s culture and spending.
Kendi’s center, founded in June 2020 at the height of the racial justice movement in the wake of George Floyd’s death, fired between 15 and 20 employees, Semafor reported last week. The center had employed 45 people as of August.
One former faculty member at the think tank accused the university of “unemployment violence” after the center laid off staff members.
“This act of employment violence and trauma is not just about individual leaders. It’s about the cultures and systems that allow it to occur,” Phillipe Copeland, who used to work under Kendi, said on Facebook this weekend. “And too often rewards it. Antiracism is not a branding exercise, PR campaign or path to self-promotion. It is a life and death matter.”
Kendi became a wealthy man for his “antiracist” work following the riots and protests after Floyd’s death. He received a $625,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2021, and charges $20,000 per speaking engagement. His center, however, has produced hardly any original research.
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