TIME magazine has named Dr. Ibram X. Kendi – history professor, founding director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research and leading advocate against systemic racism – one of the 100 most influential people in the world, BU Today reported.
Dr. Ibram X. KendiOthers on the 2020 Time100 list – released Tuesday night – include President Trump, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden; Sen. Kamala Harris; actor Michael B. Jordan; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; singer Selena Gomez; and scholar and longtime civil rights activist Angela Davis.
“Being selected to the Time100 list is one of the highlights of my career,” Kendi said. “But at the end of the day, none of this is about me. I’m focused on using any influence I may have to challenge racism, to eliminate racial inequity and injustice, to build an antiracist world. This is the calling of my life, and it is certainly the calling of 2020.”
Kendi, 38, has written five books, including How To Be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.
“Kendi doesn’t simply engage in the ‘paralysis of analysis,’ as Martin Luther King, Jr., once observed,” the Rev. Al Sharpton wrote in an article on Kendi. “He provides concrete and actionable steps and recommendations that we can all take to wipe out the vestiges of racism and bigotry and strive to be—to use the term Kendi popularized in 2019—antiracist.”
