Ibram X. Kendi was at the top of the world in 2020. He had become the leading evangelist for the idea that Americans should strive for racial equity by active discrimination in favor of African Americans. He stated this idea quite clearly in his 2019 book How to Be an Antiracist: “The only remedy to racist discrimination,” he said, “is antiracist discrimination.” As the movement of racial reckoning swept the country following the death of George Floyd, corporate America and higher education treated Kendi’s approach to race as dogma. How to Be an Antiracist rocketed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and became required reading in schools, universities, and workplaces across the United States.
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According to Kendi’s ideology, it is not enough to not be racist; instead, people and institutions must take race into account at all times so as to be “antiracist.” Institutions thus devoted themselves to pursuing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” project. They hired, promoted, and delivered opportunities to people based on their race. In addition, they created racially segregated groups and events, which were typically housed under new or expanded DEI centers. All the while, Kendi received endless highly compensated speaking opportunities and book deal after book deal.
Because of his newfound fame, Kendi was hired by Boston University with the promise that he would be given his own institute, the Center for Antiracist Research. Kendi drew in more than $43 million in donations for the institution within months. He brought on 45 full-time employees, far outpacing Harvard University’s Center for African Studies’ six, Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights’ 14, and the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics’ 16. The ambitious size and scale of the institution signaled that Kendi intended to make the Center for Antiracist Research the nation’s new leader in the fight against racism. All of this was to serve his goal of combatting inequities by discrimination against non-minorities.
Fast forward to 2021. Seven members of Kendi’s institute resigned within weeks of one another — seemingly in disgust over how the institute was run. Then, in September 2023, Kendi fired 19 of the Center for Antiracist Research’s remaining 36 employees. Allegations erupted that the institute had mismanaged its tens of millions in funds and failed to produce any research of significance. The research output of the institute was indeed pitiful in comparison to its size; a COVID racial tracker remained the only truly significant project. Moreover, much of Kendi’s original plan for the institute — such as his proposal to offer a minor to Boston University students — had gone by the wayside. Kendi’s grandiose visions had amounted to practically nothing.
As a result of the myriad allegations — many of which came from former employees — Boston University launched a full-scale investigation into the institute’s financial management. Past employees lined up to air their grievances with the institute. For example, Rachael DeCruz, who was previously the institute’s “associate director of advocacy,” said it was plagued by a “severe lack of transparency and communication.” Another employee, Yanique Redwood, its former executive director, penned an op-ed in the Boston Globe in which she excoriated the management of the institute:
When I arrived to begin my role, I observed that Kendi and the center were failing…. Bodies of work were stalled, funders were antsy about productivity, and many on staff seemed relieved that I had arrived. When I completed my one-on-one conversations with each staff and faculty member, I sensed their anxiety, stress, anger, and fear.
Others complained that they had been exploited and paid poorly. Still others said that Kendi had concentrated all the power in his hands only to run the institute into the ground. Simply put, Kendi’s subordinates had no faith in his leadership and viewed his efforts as an exercise in failure.
The center’s poor reputation was a major embarrassment to Kendi. Takedowns of Kendi appeared in numerous liberal media outlets. He was reviled in the Washington Post as a “huckster who was happy to cash in on America’s racial trauma.” The Post further described the controversy around Kendi as his “implosion.” The New York Times was slightly more generous in its speculation over why the Center for Antiracist Research had performed so poorly: “Kendi may simply have been ill equipped to deal with a program of that magnitude. He may have been distracted by a nonstop book tour and speaking engagements. Or maybe he just screwed up.” The New Yorker concluded that the “crisis” at the institute showed that its “grand vision” was “one that proved to be short-lived.”
Luckily for Kendi, Boston University’s initial investigation did not find evidence of financial mismanagement. It did little, however, to dispel the overwhelming consensus that the Center for Antiracist Research had failed to live up to its ambitions. Predictably, Kendi then described the controversy and ensuing investigation as the products of racism. “Unfortunately, one of the most widely held racist ideas is the idea that Black people can’t manage money or Black people take money,” he told the Associated Press. He asserted that his “skin color” had been people’s “evidence” of wrongdoing.
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But the worst setback for Ibram X. Kendi in 2023 came in the form of widespread backlash to his antiracist project. After the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, left-wing college students engaged in a frenzy of anti-Semitic activity. For many, these college students’ toxic actions exposed the problems inherent in creating a racial hierarchy in which some — such as Jewish people — are seen as oppressors, while others — such as Palestinians — are viewed as oppressed.
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The growing understanding of the problematic excesses of Kendi’s antiracist project reached its pinnacle in 2023 through the widely panned congressional testimony of the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. All three presidents refused to unequivocally state that calling for genocide against Jews would be against their university’s policies. It seemed evident that the presidents had refused to make such a condemnation because they understood that doing so would offend antiracists — those who subscribe to the ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and view Jewish people as “white” oppressors and the Jewish state as a “settler colonial” oppressive regime that persecutes minorities.
In particular, backlash against the testimony of the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, became bound up with the cause of opposing the DEI agenda. That is because Gay grounded her entire career and presidency on the ideas that Kendi brought to mainstream America. She was even chosen for the role of president on the strength of her efforts to ignite a Kendi-style racial reckoning at Harvard in her former role as dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. When she announced the university’s initiatives to “address racial and ethnic equality” following the death of George Floyd, she adopted Ibram X. Kendi’s you’re-either-for-us-or-against-us mentality. “This moment,” she said, “offers a profound opportunity for institutional change that should not and cannot be squandered.” The backlash against Gay represented the limits of public acceptance of Kendi’s ideas.
More evidence that the influence of Kendi’s ideology had peaked arrived in June 2023 when the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action is illegal racial discrimination. It marked a definitive declaration that Kendi’s approach of discriminating against certain races, such as whites and Asians, so as to benefit others is not permissible by public bodies and in higher education. While many on the left opposed the opinion — and signaled they would circumvent it — there remains for Kendi the acute danger that the Supreme Court’s ruling could teach a new generation that Kendi’s ideology contradicts the spirit of America.
In 2023, Kendi’s personal institute collapsed at the same time as the wider ideology he sought to lead faced serious resistance for the first time in years.
Kendi had a bad year. And 2024 could be even worse.
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