BU Today feature: Ibram X. Kendi, Leading Scholar of Racism, to Join BU and Launch BU Center for Antiracist Research
This article was originally published in BU Today on June 4, 2020. By Doug Most.
Ibram X. Kendi, one of the nation’s leading scholars and historians of racism, will join Boston University’s faculty on July 1 and launch the BU Center for Antiracist Research , the University announced Thursday morning.
A move that was almost a year in the making started with a book event Kendi hosted at Brookline’s Coolidge Corner Theatre in August 2019 that led to a string of conversations with Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer, and with faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences departments of history and of sociology, the African American Studies Program, and many other BU schools and colleges.
Kendi, 37, who comes to BU from American University, where he is a professor of history and of international relations, is the author of the 2019 best-selling book How To Be an Antiracist and 2012’s The Black Campus Movement, which won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize. He won the National Book Award in 2016 for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, making him the youngest winner of the award for nonfiction.
“Ibram’s appointment and his leadership will create a critical emphasis on research and policy to help eliminate racism in our country,” Robert A. Brown, BU president says. “I look forward to the impact of his work and the new Center on the Boston University community.”
Kendi has been an outspoken voice in recent weeks about the killings of unarmed black men and women, most recently George Floyd in Minneapolis, whose death by a police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes has sparked ongoing protests in cities and towns across America, including one Tuesday night at Boston’s Franklin Park that drew thousands of demonstrators. Also, just last week, Kendi spoke before the US House Ways and Means Committee about the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on black Americans. “This is the racial pandemic within the viral pandemic,” he testified.
And people are listening to him. How To Be an Antiracist and Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, his coauthored young adult version of Stamped from the Beginning, are both best sellers right now. He is a regular contributor to The Atlantic and CBS News. In 2019, The Root listed him as the nation’s most influential African American college professor under age 45.
Morrison says Kendi’s hiring aligns with one of the five major pillars of BU’s new Strategic Plan for 2030—to strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion. “Our conversation with Professor Kendi has been in the works for a while,” she says. “We have wanted to establish a research and scholarly hub around social and racial justice. I know I join many of our faculty who are thrilled that the initial conversations have culminated in Ibram’s joining Boston University.”