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Following layoffs, Boston University announces ‘inquiry’ into Ibram Kendi’s Antiracist Center
During the heights of antiracism mania back in June of 2020, Boston University decided to show off their commitment by hiring noted antiracist Ibram Kendi to head their new "Antiracist Center", which raised tens of millions of dollars and included dozens of faculty members. Three years later, after failing to achieve such important objectives as a "Racial Data Tracker", complaints emerged about the center's management of funds and culture. For example, the former "assistant director of narrative" (incredible job title, btw) complained that Kendi was never available and shit didn't get done; he was busy producing important academic work such as a graphic novel, a podcast, and a TV show, and recently returned from several months of leave to tell half of the staff they were being laid off so they could switch to a "fellowship based model". Another professor wondered where grant money, that never seemed to be tied to any expectation of performing research, had gone. This article from the student paper goes into more detail on the allegations.
You have to feel for BU here - after all, the guy won a MacArthur genius grant and wrote a NYT bestseller. There was no way to predict he had no idea how to run an academically rigorous enterprise.
Here’s a thought I had today: This is only happening because the Supreme Court banned affirmative action.
I was rereading Zvi’s moral mazes sequence, and one of the concepts that stood out to me is the idea that ambitious people will self-modify themselves, right down to their own epistemology and values, in order to better conform with workplace culture. When affirmative action was “in”, all the administrators and middle managers were in a very real sense unable to see the incompetence and lack of results that came out of programs like Kendi’s Antiracist Center. They had to be good because they were affirmative-action programs, and affirmative action was good. Now that this paradigm has been shattered by the highest court in the land, the scales have fallen from their eyes. They can see plainly the fruits of what they have done. Affirmative action? Never heard of her. We hire strictly on merit here. We have always done that. It was just a few loons in the early 2020s with their wacky ideas. We never really bought into them.
This sounds much more like a classic case of leftist activists eating their own. Kendi didn't do a good enough job spreading the lucre around, so his subordinates turned on him, hoping to win some points for taking down the toxic cis-male boss while they're at it. It's more likely we're seeing some younger academics taking advantage of an opportunity to advance their careers than any sort of change in perspective from the administrators.
Part of my lack of sympathy for BU is that this was so very plainly a 'woke' endeavour, and a lot of the young professionally aggrieved BIPOC sixteen versions of minority along all the spectra types, particularly but not confined to academics, think they shouldn't have to do anything. Reparations, man. It's not my job to educate you. I'm so tired of explaining things to white people. Emotional labour.
They felt they should be given a nice title, a fat salary, and a plum job and have to do nothing more than repeat the talking points about "everything is the fault of systemic racism". The boss expecting them to do real work (even if it was him dropping his own work on top of them, a separate issue) wasn't supposed to happen.
It's happened before with vegan queer restaurants/other worker-owned places of employment where the lovely theories about doing it all for the oppressed minority and the people own the fruits of their labour soon run into the realities of "if you're running a restaurant, somebody has to cook and clean and wait tables and guess what, it's a lot of work" and then it all crashes and burns amidst bitter recriminations about "you didn't pay us enough, so we went on strike, so you had to close down, and now we're condemning you for putting us out of a job even though we were protesting the job in the first place".
And, to note, employee owned companies are a thing where employees who have a certain amount of seniority are the only people allowed to own company stock. They’re generally decently to above averagely successful. It’s only these communist fantasies of ‘grunt work is a creation of capitalism’ or whatever that crash and burn in this obvious cartoonish manner.
Brings to mind the "What's Your Job on the Leftist Commune?" meme, where seemingly 90% of people claim to want to be some variation of therapist, philosopher, academic, or barista, while barely 10% show any interest in manual labor, farming, construction, etc. Sample picture
To be fair, that was from pandemic days where people who don't have either social contact or employment were bound to go on the Internet writing unrealistic things.
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Who says AA is not good just because scotus said it was illegal? Certainly not Harvard, anyway, who redoubled their commitment to achieving their desired demographics by hook or by crook.
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that's basically the argument kendi makes - that racist ideas come from racist policy. hell, it's basically the same argument hanania makes in his book - that (anti)racist ideas come from (anti)racist policy (the civil rights act).
The difference is that Hanania can point to specific (anti)racist policy while Kendi just assumes it must exist.
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