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The turmoil at Ibram X. Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, which recently laid off more than half its staff, has been a schadenfreude bonanza for the right. Kendi, who argues that there's no such thing as racial neutrality, that all ideas and policies are either racist or anti-racist, was perhaps the biggest intellectual star to emerge from the febrile, quasi-revolutionary moment following the murder of George Floyd. The Center for Antiracist Research launched in 2020 with a grandiose vision, seeking to "understand, explain and solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice." Money poured in; it ultimately raised nearly $55 million.
Three years later, there are considerable questions about what's been accomplished with all that money. Major initiatives, including plans to develop degree programs in anti-racism, have been shelved. Little original research has been produced. People who worked at the center have alleged a long-standing pattern of severe mismanagement, with administrators amassing grants with little commitment to doing the work proposed in them. Boston University has begun an inquiry into how the center has been run.
Conservatives who see Kendi as the living embodiment of the style of social justice activism they deride as "wokeness" are, naturally, gleeful. Jeffrey Blehar wrote in National Review that he "cannot emphasize enough" how much the Kendi affair "fills me with delight." Many on the right see the center's apparent implosion as proof that the anti-racist politics that flourished three years ago were always and only a con. "The point was always to line grifters' pockets off of the white guilt of liberals and the major corporations they run," said a Washington Examiner column.
It's almost hard to blame right-wingers for their delight; Kendi's mistakes played right into their hands. But for the rest of us, it's important to understand that the center's apparent implosion is more the result of a failed funding model than a failed ideology. It exemplifies the lamentable tendency among left-leaning donors to chase fads and celebrities rather than build sustainable institutions.
For years, people on the left have dreamed of imitating the success of the Koch network, a plutocratic donor consortium that provides long-term investments in the right's intellectual infrastructure. Koch recipients have included the Federalist Society, the right-wing legal behemoth, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, a key incubator of conservative state legislation.
Koch-funded organizations shepherd young conservatives from college to the highest rungs of American power. The Koch network's investments in conservative ideas and activism are patient, keeping scholars, activists and organizations going during moments that are politically unpromising, so that they can leap into action when opportunities arise.