Midwest Chick's Place

I’m not sure if you all remember Ibram Kendi (born Ibram Rogers), who coined the term anti-racist and made big bucks off off the term, but was unable to define it when asked (pro-tip, in order to state or set forth the meaning of a word, the word in question should not be used—otherwise it’s circular and dumb).

He got his own center at Boston University (Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research) that raked in millions and millions of dollars from outside donors.   Over $43 million, as a matter of fact.

The Center hasn’t really managed to do much (two pretty crappy (IMO) research papers that were co-authored with outside academics).  Here’s a thumbnail of the papers…

Global health professor Elaine Nsoesie, who leads the Racial Data Tracker project at the center, co-authored a January paper that concluded that areas with more black residents had more “dilapidated buildings.”

Management and organizations professor Sanaz Mobasseri, another scholar at the center, co-authored a paper that stated, “We treat White men as the dominant group and Black people as the archetypal subordinate group in U.S. society.”

Wow, the rarified air of academe just oozes out of of these…  I truly can’t believe anyone else would sign on to them.

Additionally, Kendi has been ‘on leave’ for months and of course did not delegate authority.  Once he got back, 20 employees were axed (about half of them).  And he did it over Zoom (at least he didn’t use a parrot).  

I’m not crying over this.

But wait, there’s more…

Boston University is actually doing an audit to see where all of that money went since no one seems to know. The link is from Legal Insurrection, the quote is from the Boston Globe (linked at LI).

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.

Chris Rufo says (and I concur):

It’s looking like the BLM scam: raise cash, produce nothing, drain the accounts, then watch it collapse.