The New York Times runs an enormous article on why Ibram X. Kendi’s lavishly funded Center for Antiracist Research at Boston U. has been a fiasco.

Ibram X. Kendi Faces a Reckoning of His Own

In 2020, the author of “How to Be an Antiracist” galvanized Americans with his ideas. The past four years have tested them—and him.

By Rachel Poser

Rachel Poser is an editor for the magazine. She spoke to Kendi over a period of several months and visited him at his research center in Boston.

June 4, 2024

Ibram X. Kendi has a notebook that prompts him, on every other page, to write down “Things to be grateful for.” There are many things he might put under that heading. First and foremost, his wife and two daughters, and his health, having made it through Stage 4 colon cancer in his 30s—a diagnosis with a 12 percent survival rate. Tenure at Boston University, where Martin Luther King Jr. earned his doctorate in theology. A National Book Award, and a MacArthur “genius” grant for “transforming how many people understand, discuss and attempt to redress America’s longstanding racial challenges.” Then there were the millions of people who bought “How to Be an Antiracist,” the first of five of his books to take the No. 1 spot on the New York Times best-seller list.

On the other hand, when tens of millions of dollars were showered upon Kendi in 2020 to create a Center for Antiracist Research at Boston U., Kendi proved a complete flop, with almost all his employees quickly coming to despise him.

After all, practically all American social science departments are devoted to anti-white research. And yet, documenting that, say, blacks commit murder vastly more than do Hispanics, much less Asians, doesn’t quite prove that whites must be at fault for the sins of blacks. It tends to raise subversive thoughts, such as that maybe blacks should try harder not to be so murderous.

Back in 2019, the Washington Post documented in passing why Kendi would be a failure: He’s not all that bright:

The Anti-Racist Revelations of Ibram X. Kendi

Meet the historian who’s asking America to rethink the very nature of bigotry—and how to fight it.

By David Montgomery
OCTOBER 14, 2019

Ibram H. Rogers, 17, hadn’t even told his parents that he was entering a Martin Luther King Jr. Day oratorical contest. They found out after he won one of the early rounds and they got a videotape of his performance. “We’ll never forget that Saturday morning we put the tape in and watched him,” Larry Rogers, Ibram’s father, told me recently. “We were really surprised.” Ibram was a bright but underachieving senior at his Northern Virginia high school. His GPA was below 3.0; his SAT scores were just above 1000. He thought he wasn’t smart enough for college, even though he had been admitted to historically black Florida A&M University.