FAMU grad Ibram X. Kendi, Ph.D., one of the nation’s leading scholars and historians on racism, will leave his post at American University to join the faculty at Boston University on July to launch the BU Center for Antiracist Research.
Kendi, 37, 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.
“Imbram’s appointment and his leadership will create a critical emphasis on research and policy to help eliminate racism in our country,” said Robert A. Brown, BU president. “I look forward to the impact of his work and the new Center on the Boston University community.”
Kendi is an established public intellectual and has been an outspoken voice in recent weeks about the killings of unarmed Black men and women, most recently George Floyd in Minneapolis.
"This center will bring together researchers and practitioners from across the University and the region to engage around issues of racism and racial justice," BU said, adding that its mission "in Kendi's words, will be 'to solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.' "
The need for such a center has been magnified by recent events "as we have all experienced painful reminders of the persistence of racism and racial inequities in our society," the university said.
Kendi graduated from FAMU in 2004 graduate with a dual major in Journalism and African American Studies.