At a time of rampant hiring freezes in higher education, Boston University is onboarding Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, one of the most sought-after scholars on racism in America, to direct its new Center for Antiracist Research.
A professor of history and international relations at American University, Kendi founded its Antiracist Research and Policy Center. He will be starting his new position on July 1, a plan in the works for almost a year, according to Boston University leaders.
Crystal Williams, Boston University’s associate provost for diversity and inclusion, attended a book event by Kendi in 2019, prompting a series of conversations that led to his hiring.
“He steps into a lauded history of formidable and publicly engaged intellectuals,” Williams said in a statement. “Ibram’s extraordinary vision and scholarship will deepen and further BU’s [Boston University’s] ongoing commitment to anti-racist work. I know I join many of our faculty who are thrilled that the initial conversations have culminated in Ibram’s joining Boston University.”
Kendi is drawn to Boston’s “historic and rich tradition of antiracist organizing and activism,” he told Diverse. He pointed out that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. studied at Boston University and Dr. Howard Zinn, a historian, taught there. Poet Phillis Wheatley, abolitionist Maria Steward and Malcolm X all passed through the city, as well.
He admires Boston University’s “seriousness and ambition” to create a “hub for racial and social justice,” he said.
Kendi, 37, is the author of the 2019 New York Times best-seller “How To Be an Antiracist.” He also wrote “The Black Campus Movement” in 2012, which won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize, and “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” in 2016, which won him the National Book Award and made him the youngest winner for nonfiction.
