Cómo ser antirracista Ibram X. Kendi

Teaching

From 2009 to 2012, Kendi was an assistant professor of history in the department of Africana and Latino Studies within the department of history at State University of New York at Oneonta.[12] From 2012 to 2015, Kendi was an assistant professor of Africana Studies in the department of Africana Studies as well as the department of history at University at Albany, SUNY.[12] During this time, from 2013 to 2014, Kendi was a visiting scholar in the department of Africana Studies at Brown University, where he taught courses as a visiting assistant professor in the fall of 2014.[12]

From 2015 to 2017, Kendi was an assistant professor in the history department and African American Studies program at the University of Florida.[12][15][16]

In 2017, Kendi became a professor of history and international relations at the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and School of International Service (SIS) at American University in Washington, D.C.[17] In September 2017, Kendi founded the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, serving as its executive director.[3] In June 2020, it was announced that Kendi would join Boston University as a professor of history.[18] Upon accepting the position, Kendi agreed to step down from the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University and relocate to Boston University, and become the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.[19][20] When he was hired at Boston University, Kendi was awarded its Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities, whose only prior recipient was author, activist, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.[21]

During the 2020–2021 academic year, Kendi served as the Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.[22]

Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University

Kendi is the founding director of Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research, which was launched in 2020.[23] In August 2020, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to the center; the center received $43 million in grants and gifts over the next 3 years.[24]

The center's Racial Data Lab produced the COVID Racial Data Tracker from April 2020 to March 2021, highlighting that Black Americans died at 1.4 times the rate of White Americans during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.[24] In 2021, inspired by 19th-century abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator, the center launched a news website also called The Emancipator in partnership with Bina Venkataraman of The Boston Globe.[25] In June 2022, the center published essays from 35 Anti-bigotry Fellows, which provided legal and statistical analysis on various forms of discrimination.[24]

Mismanagement allegations

In September 2023, Kendi announced mass layoffs of the center's staff. Boston University then announced that they had opened an inquiry "focused on the center's culture and its grant management practices" and are "expanding our inquiry to include the Center's management culture and the faculty and staff's experience with it."[24][26]

On September 24, 2023, Stephanie Saul of The New York Times wrote:

The center's struggles come amid deeper concerns about its management and focus, and questions about whether Dr. Kendi—whose fame has brought him new projects from an ESPN series to children's books about racist ideas in America—was providing the leadership the newly created institute needed. Until the university established the center, the 41-year-old Dr. Kendi had never run an organization anywhere near its size … several former staff and faculty members, expressing anger and bitterness, said the cause of the center's problems were unrealistic expectations fueled by the rapid infusion of money, initial excitement, and pressure to produce too much, too fast, even as there were hiring delays due to the pandemic. Others blamed Dr. Kendi, himself, for what they described as an imperious leadership style. And they questioned both the center's stewardship of grants and its productivity. "Commensurate to the amount of cash and donations taken in, the outputs were minuscule," said Saida U. Grundy, a Boston University sociology professor and feminist scholar who was once affiliated with the center.[27]

In the course of the investigation, other professors at Boston University who worked at the center have attested to the center's issues, with one alleging that the center "was being mismanaged"[28] and another commenting, "I don't know where the money is."[29] Steph Solis of Axios noted that the scandal "cast a shadow" over the center,[29] while Tyler Austin Harper, writing for The Washington Post, characterized Kendi's work at the center as "grift."[30]

In November 2023, Boston University announced that its audit had "found no issues with how CAR’s finances were handled, showing that its expenditures were appropriately charged to their respective grant and gift accounts." In the same announcement, the university stated that it had hired the management consulting firm Korn Ferry to conduct an audit on the center's workplace culture and Kendi's leadership.[31]

Writing

Kendi has published essays in both books and academic journals, including The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of African American Studies, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. Kendi is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic.[32]

He is the author of six books:

• The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America[33]
• How to Be an Antiracist
• STAMPED: Racism, Antiracism, and You
• Antiracist Baby[10]
• How to Raise an Antiracist

In 2016, Kendi won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning, which was published by Nation Books.[34][35] He was the youngest author to ever win the prize.[36] Titled after an 1860 speech given by Jefferson Davis at the U.S. Senate,[9][37] the book builds around the stories of Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis.[3]

How to Be an Antiracist

A New York Times #1 Best Seller in 2020, How to Be an Antiracist is Kendi's most popular work thus far.[38] Professor Jeffrey C. Stewart called it the "most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind".[39] Afua Hirsch praised the book's introspection and wrote that it was relatable in the context of ongoing political events.[40] In contrast, Andrew Sullivan wrote that the book's arguments were simplistic and criticized Kendi's idea of transferring government oversight to an unelected Department of Antiracism.[41] Kelefa Sanneh noted Kendi's "sacred fervor" in battling racism, but wondered if his definition of racism was so capacious and outcome-dependent as to risk losing its power.[13] John McWhorter criticized the book as being simplistic and challenged Kendi's claim that all racial disparities are necessarily due to racism.[42]

Honors and awards

• 2016: National Book Award for Nonfiction, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America – National Book Foundation[34]
• 2019: Guggenheim Fellowship, U.S. History – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation[43]
• 2019: 15th most influential African American between 25 and 45 years old according to The Root 100[36]
• 2020: Frances B. Cashin Fellowship, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study – Harvard University[22]
• 2020: Time 100 list of Most Influential People[36]
• 2021: MacArthur Fellowship[44]
• 2021: Museum of African American History Living Legends award – The Garrison Silver Cup[45]