FEATURED
Ibram Kendi’s new center is reportedly launching this month at Howard University, according to his spokesman.
The “antiracist” advocate officially began his new job at the historically black university in Washington D.C. in August.
Since then, details about his new center have remained sparse – the Institute for Advanced Study does not currently have its own website beyond a fundraising link.
It is not yet listed among Howard’s other think tanks on a “Research Centers & Institutes” page for graduate students or its main “Centers & Institutes” page.
Kendi is also bringing over The Emancipator, a publication focused on racial issues, from Boston University.
Howard University media relations director Carol Wilkerson referred questions about the institute to a spokesman for Kendi.
“We look forward to launching The Emancipator and the Institute’s website at the beginning of next year,” the spokesman told The Fix at the end of 2025.
The Emancipator is set to launch in the new year – it announced the hiring of a new managing editor in mid-December. Originally, the publication was set to launch in November of last year.
The spokesman did not answer whether there had been progress on internship or fellowship opportunities Kendi had previously announced, or whether the professor had been meeting with students and faculty to discuss plans for the institute.
The institute will be “dedicated to interdisciplinary study advancing research of importance to the global African Diaspora” with inquiry into topics including “racism, climate change, and disparities,” according to the original announcement from Howard University.
Kendi left Boston University, where he had been a professor since 2020, amid controversy over his leadership of its Center for Antiracist Research.
In August, Kendi told The Fix: “I am looking forward to working with colleagues over the next year to strategically plan, acquire resources, hire staff, and unveil programs, including The Emancipator and our fellowship program.” At the time, he anticipated that starting the institute would take “six months to a year.”
An academic scholar said moving a think tank from one place to another should make it relatively quick to get started.
Frederick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said he would “normally expect a center like this, which is simply being moved from point A to point B, to be up and getting started within the first five or six months— if not sooner.”
Hess believes it is “quite unusual” for Kendi to be selected to run another center. “Any normal scholar with Kendi’s record of financial impropriety, mismanagement, and scholarly lassitude would be searching for a new career— not invited to set up a new multimillion-dollar enterprise,” he told The Fix.
Questions raised about fiscal prudence
A university cleared him of any wrongdoing when it came to bookkeeping, but questions had been raised about the few results produced by the center relative to the amount of money it brought in from donors.
Kendi raised more than $50 million for the Boston University center, but failed to deliver on many of its promises. It laid off more than half of its staff in September 2023, and it was functionally inactive for most of 2024. The university conducted an internal audit in November 2023 that “found no issues with how CAR’s finances were handled.” However, Kendi also faced criticism over his leadership style, academic record, and the center’s work culture.
Notably, the 2023 layoffs primarily affected black and Hispanic employees, making them racist according to Kendi’s definition of the term.
Kendi claimed the allegations against him were due to racism, despite many of his critics being black. Kendi said in an interview with Mother Jones, “If you’re a Black leader, chances are somebody [has] claimed that you mismanaged something, because apparently Black leaders, we can’t manage anything.”
“It wasn’t surprising for me or anyone who sort of studies racism that those allegations surfaced,” he said.
Since The Fix’s previous article, Kendi has been added to the history department’s faculty page, and his biography references the Institute for Advanced Study. However, it does not discuss his time at Boston University in any capacity. Additionally, the “Howard Institute for Advanced Study” tab on Kendi’s personal website now directs users to the fundraising page.
Hess said there is growing awareness that “the antiracist agenda” is “a toxic, racist dogma that has spawned embarrassing, dogmatic ‘research.’”
Last year, the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota also closed after its director faced a plagiarism scandal and concerns over her management style.
