Howard University snags quite the prize: Kendi
[NOTE: I’ve written several previous posts about Kendi, for example this.]
Howard University has given Ibran X. Kendi a plum job – or, as the headline of the article puts it, “Howard University appoints racist crackpot as history professor, giving him an endowed chair.” An excerpt:
… [Kendi] “will serve as the inaugural holder of the Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair in History, a position supported by $3 million in donor funding that honors its namesake historian, known as the ‘father of Black history’…In addition to his chair position, Kendi will direct the school’s new Institute for Advanced Study, which ‘is dedicated to interdisciplinary study advancing research of importance to the global African Diaspora, including inquiry into race, technology, racism, climate change, and disparities,’” reports Campus Reform.
Interim President Wayne A.I. Frederick said the appointment “affirms Howard University’s enduring responsibility to steward Black history with rigor, integrity, and purpose.”
Kendi supports racial discrimination against whites, and hates capitalism. “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says Ibram X. Kendi’s best-selling book promoting race-based government policies, How to Be An Antiracist. The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist was that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality for black people: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi in that book. Students in many school systems have been assigned a book by Kendi that is historically inaccurate. Kendi once wrote an op-ed suggesting that white people are aliens from outer space.
Boston University had tried giving Kendi a similarly influential job and lots of money during heyday of Black Lives Matter and the antiracism craze (June 2020), and got almost nothing for their pains and their money. The center he headed was finally demonetized last year:
… [Kendi] wrote zero academic papers at least during the first three years he was there…..On a [2024] page titled ‘What We’re Working On,’ nothing is listed from this year. No policy reports or convenings have been published since 2022…[In 2024] The Antiracist Legal Education Project advertises an event from September 2023 as ‘upcoming,’ while the annual Antiracist Book Festival was not held in 2023 or 2024. A Vertex Symposium, which is also described as an annual event, has not occurred since 2022.”
As Campus Reform notes, “Before joining Howard, Kendi founded and led Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research (CAR), which launched in 2020 following the death of George Floyd. The center aimed to promote policies and scholarship designed to build what Kendi described as an ‘antiracist society,’ but was shuttered by the university last June following reports of internal management issues and financial concerns…..Campus Reform reported on the closure and questions raised by staffers about the center’s operations, including former employee Yanique Redwood, who stated that employees felt ‘overwhelmed’ and that leadership made ‘too many promises’ to funders while delivering few tangible results.”
Boston University’s gain is Howard University’s loss, although Howard doesn’t seem to see it that way.
At least Kendi’s not a terrorist from the 60s. Many of them landed cushy university jobs, too – after they got out of prison, or remained “free as a bird” on technicalities.
Higher education is run by oily villains who lie to themselves and others quite readily.
“Boston University had tried giving Kendi a similarly influential job . . . .”
Let me comment on Boston University, s’il vous plaît. It once was definitely a quality school. But either there are cracks in its armor, or it has gone to h#ll as so many schools have recently done (or something in between, as it’s not necessarily a binary affair).
“[Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a BA in International Relations and Economics.”
— https://www.bu.edu/econ/alumni/distinguished-alumni-award/2019-awards/
According to Snopes, she “graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011.” Snopes “reached out to the university to clarify the issue: Did she earn a degree in international relations with a focus in economics? Or did she major in both international relations and economics? They indicated that the latter was true.”
— https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ocasio-cortez-resume/
She graduated cum laude? In two majors? Based on the numerous congressional hearings videos in which I’ve had the privilege of watching her in action . . .
Boston University either has suffered *severe* grade inflation these past couple of decades, or it has in fact gone to h#ll (is there an in-between here?).
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Okay, I know that neo’s piece was about this Ibran X. Kendi character, but I just wanted to take the opportunity to get the foregoing off my chest.
I’m familiar with Howard University only by its reputation as the black Harvard — and to the extent that that’s the case, I have about as much respect for Howard as I do for Harvard (little at this late date), probably excluding incidental selected pockets of quality research — specifically but not necessarily exclusively S.T.E.M. research — that may be lurking in any of the three aforementioned schools.
Carry on . . .
Clearly Howard University has decided to enter the competition of who shall be the first to reach the academic bottom. A worthy competitor to the University of North Carolina’s Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 ‘Project’.
Putting the Equity and Inclusion into DEI, especially the Equity part.
But it’s too bad for Howard, he will bring neither accomplishment, distinction, nor credibility to their reputation, I think.
How bizarre and totally immoral for “Historically black” and yet proudly, stupidly still-insistantly black colleges and universities to proclaim their racial bias and animus while snarfing, er feeding, at the federal tax money trough.
Well, I ain’t capitalizing “black”. Never have, never will.
Culture Marxism Seminaries teaching Marxism
Neo,
I found this: https://substack.com/@clarionx/note/c-224266922?r=6wwgao
As I was scrolling through Neo’s posts to yesterday’s Open Thread, I guess my eyes saw the images making up the work Howard, but by the time those nerve pulses got to my brain, my brain saw Harvard. Thus my thought was “yes, of course, that fits and makes sense!”.
When even the traditionally black colleges end up pursuing “the soft bigotry of low expectations” by enlisting subpar “talent”, they don’t improve race relations one bit. Very sad, to end up providing a good example of a bad example.
Kamala Harris is a Howard graduate. I’m sure her high-powered academic parents could have gotten her into a better school, but she wanted to go to a black school instead,
My guess is that she feared going to a more competitive college. My theory about Harris is that she didn’t think she could live up to her parents’ successes. She strikes me as a person who has taken the easier way for most of her life.
KH belonged to a sorority while at Howard. Mr. Sailer pulled up a newspaper account of her meeting up with some old sisters at an event at Howard. In his view, that’s the social milieu in which KH is most at home.
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Harmeet Dhillon was acquainted with KH thirty-odd years ago. She’s been puzzled by KH’s inability to speak intelligibly and said she didn’t used to be like that.
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My guess is that she feared going to a more competitive college.
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The right place for her mother or her father wasn’t necessarily the right place for her. Given her upbringing, Howard was an odd choice, not necessarily a bad choice. In the black population at large, a more prevalent issue is that of black youth being recruited as ornamentation by schools whose pace of instruction is suboptimal for them because too rapid.
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In re Kendi and diAngelo, they’re parody academicians. Their careers are fairly gross manifestations of the degree to which higher education is a patronage mill for privileged political interests and for favored demographic segments. State legislatures could repair this problem (at least at public institutions), but they do nothing.
@ Art Deco- ” State legislatures could repair this problem (at least at public institutions), but they do nothing.”
That’s the ultimate trouble with democracies: the Trash votes and is pandered to; therein lies the insoluble problem.
Art Deco: schools whose pace of instruction is suboptimal for them because too rapid.
In college your course load is your choice, subject to some pressure from the advising office. When I chose 4-5 classes/quarter, I got C’s and often had to drop a class. When I chose 3/quarter, I got B’s and A’s. Part of college is leaning to ignore pressure and make the right choice for yourself. Students who do that can graduate in almost any field, from almost any school. (I have a BS and a PhD in engineering from two top ten schools, and I’m a slow learner.)
AppleBetty on April 4, 2026 at 1:01 pm:
“Part of college is leaning to ignore pressure and make the right choice for yourself.”
Agree. I was pledging a fraternity and just decided it was not for me, so I dropped out of that path. But that may also have had some repercussions per the following:
“I have a BS and a PhD in engineering from two top ten schools, and I’m a slow learner.”
So do I (maybe from a top 10 and a top 20 school). I didn’t have much trouble with the classwork, but some things about people skills and work politics and social politics were where I was “slow”. I was not wise about career planning and the related networking, glad handing, etc. And I was 65, 5 years after retiring, when I realized some of the mistakes I thought I had made could also be laid at the feet of the institution not managing my program as well as they should have.
Slow learning takes many forms. 🙂
There is fu money and then there is fumore money. Harvard has that in spades.