Twitter CEO Dorsey Donates $10 Million to Ibram X. Kendi, Who Wants To Make Racism Unconstitutional

"Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Donates $10 Million to Ibram X. Kendi, Who Wants To Make Racism Unconstitutional":

https://reason.com/2020/08/20/jack-dorsey-ibram-x-kendi-twitter-ceo-racism-center/

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Donates $10 Million to Ibram X. Kendi, Who Wants To Make Racism Unconstitutional
"This research will inform and fuel much needed and overdue policy change."
ROBBY SOAVE | 8.20.2020 5:34 PM

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced on Thursday that he was donating $10 million to Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research, a project recently launched by the antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi.

Kendi is the author of the 2019 book How to Be An Antiracist, one of two books that attracted renewed attention following the death of George Floyd. (The other is Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility.) In a tweet, he thanked Dorsey for the grant, which came with "no strings attached."

Dorsey replied that he hoped the center's research would inform and fuel "much needed and overdue policy change."

The CEO of Twitter is more than welcome to spend his financial resources however he sees fit. He can give money to anyone he wants, for any reason. But since Kendi intends to have an impact on public policy—and since these funds presumably will help Kendi fulfill his goals—it's worth scrutinizing what kinds of policy changes he has in mind.

In a 2019 piece for POLITICO magazine, Kendi proposed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit racism. Here is his idea in full:

To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with "racist ideas" and "public official" clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won't yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.​

Such an amendment would constitute a brazen assault on the principles of a free society. Kendi would like to empower a team of government bureaucrats who are beyond even the normal accountability of the political process. Their job would be to investigate both public and private racism, and "monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas." Kendi's promise that what constitutes a "racist idea" would be "clearly defined" is hardly reassuring: There's no way such a department could avoid becoming an Orwellian nightmare—indeed, the very program would necessitate the formation of a kind of speech police.

This isn't just a bad idea—it's one of the worst ideas ever. Inez Stepman of the Independent Women's Forum called it "woke Stalinism," and she's not even really exaggerating. Under Kendi's proposal, the government would investigate people for making allegedly racist statements, or causing allegedly racial inequities.

The center will probably work on other projects as well. "Kendi's vision for the center calls for multidisciplinary research and policy teams," explained Boston University in a press release. "Researchers across BU, from the law, social work, the humanities, computer science, communications, and medicine and public health, will collaborate with researchers from other universities, as well as data analysts, journalists, advocates, and policy experts."

But it's discouraging to see so much money being spent at least partly in service of a cause that would vastly grow the government's power and gravely undermine free speech—if not destroy it entirely. Dorsey can set whatever speech rules he wants for Twitter: going after the First Amendment is a different and much more serious matter.​

 

the link is a 'gift' article and should open for anyone who clicks it

Ibram X. Kendi’s fall is a cautionary tale — so was his rise
White American elites are always ready to turn a Black intellectual into a mouthpiece for their political agenda

https://wapo.st/3tj0Ejl

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ib...ogressive-fb92d525?mod=hp_opin_pos_5#cxrecs_s

How Ibram X. Kendi Broke Boston University
The university totally committed itself to his ideology. It hasn’t backed off despite the scandal.
By David Decosimo
Sept. 28, 2023 at 5:57 pm ET

The debacle that is Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research is about far more than its founder, Ibram X. Kendi. It is about a university, caught up in cultural hysteria, subordinating itself to ideology.

After suddenly laying off over half his employees last week and with his center producing almost nothing since its founding, Mr. Kendi is now facing an investigation and harsh criticism from numerous colleagues complaining of financial mismanagement, dysfunctional leadership, and failure to honor obligations attached to its millions in grant money.

Such an outcome was entirely predictable. In June 2020, the university hired Mr. Kendi, created and endowed his center, and canceled all “classes, meetings, and events” for a quasi-religious “Day of Collective Engagement” on “Racism and Antiracism, Our Realities and Our Roles,” during which Mr. Kendi and his colleagues were treated as sages.

They denounced voter-identification laws as “an expressly antiblack form of state violence,” claimed Ronald Reagan flooded “black communities with crack cocaine,” and declared that every black person was “literally George Floyd.” One speaker said that decades ago “literal uprising and rebellion in the streets” forced the creation of black-studies programs in universities nationwide, and now was the time to revolutionize the “whole institution” and make antiracism central to every discipline and a requirement for all faculty hiring.

That summer many BU departments published Kendi-ist “antiracist” statements limiting academic freedom and subordinating inquiry to his ideology. With their dean’s oversight and approval, the School of Theatre passed a plan to audit all syllabi, courses and policies to ensure conformity with “an anti-oppression and anti-racist lens” and discussed placing monitors in each class to report violations of antiracist ideology. The sociology department publicly announced that “white supremacy and racism” were “pervasive and woven into . . . our own . . . department.” In the English department’s playwriting program, all syllabi would have to “assign 50% diverse-identifying and marginalized writers,” and any “material or scholarship . . . from a White or Eurocentric lineage” could be taught only “through an actively anti-racist lens.” They even published hiring quotas based on race: “We commit to . . . hiring at least 50% BIPOC”—an acronym for black, indigenous or people of color—“artists by 2023.”

I had recently earned tenure and was serving as a member of BU’s Faculty Council and as chairman of its Academic Freedom Committee. By fall 2020, I was hearing from faculty—all progressives—who were disturbed by what was unfolding in their departments on campus but terrified to speak up. They had seen colleagues face major professional damage for falsely being denounced as racist. I tried to help, but the Academic Freedom Committee had no real power. We could only ask the senior administration to act. It did nothing.

Activist faculty weren’t the only ones transforming BU into an officially Kendi-ist institution. The push was coming from the university’s highest levels. In spring 2020, the Faculty Council had approved a major strategic plan for the university over the next decade. All that remained was a board of trustees vote. Suddenly, a revised plan was presented: Being an “antiracist” institution, with specific reference to Mr. Kendi, was proposed as one of the university’s five main aims.

At a September 2020 Zoom meeting, and with explicit reference to Mr. Kendi’s hire, BU President Robert Brown announced several universitywide “antiracist” initiatives, including a task force to examine and expunge racism from BU. A dean claimed the administration would examine not only policies and practices but even ideas—and not only for racism but for whatever might “facilitate racism.”

I pointed out in the meeting that “any notion of ‘antiracism’ presupposes a definition of ‘racism.’ Beyond civil-rights law and common sense, what counts as ‘racism’ is essentially contested and reflective of competing ethical and political views.” I said it sounded as if the university was officially endorsing Mr. Kendi’s views. I asked if his notion of “racism” would guide the BU task force, and I noted that his view that every disparate outcome is caused by and constitutes racism is controversial and rejected by conservatives such as the economist Glenn Louryand progressives such as the Black Marxist Adolph Reed Jr. and my former teacher Cornel West.

Mr. Brown didn’t answer me directly. Immediately, several deans came after me in the chat. I was clearly uninformed and confused; now wasn’t the time for “intellectual debate.” They implied I might not actually oppose racism.

I wrote a letter to BU’s president that afternoon, stressing that beyond the problems with Mr. Kendi’s vision, the more fundamental issue concerned betraying the university’s research and teaching mission by making any ideology institutional orthodoxy. Nothing changed. Even now, BU is insisting it will “absolutely not” step back from its commitment to Mr. Kendi’s antiracism.

Mr. Kendi deserves some blame for the scandal, but the real culprit is institutional and cultural. It’s still unfolding and is far bigger than BU. In 2020, countless universities behaved as BU did. And to this day at universities everywhere, activist faculty and administrators are still quietly working to institutionalize Mr. Kendi’s vision. They have made embracing “diversity, equity and inclusion” a criterion for hiring and tenure, have rewritten disciplinary standards to privilege antiracist ideology, and are discerning ways to circumvent the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action ruling.

Most of those now attacking Mr. Kendi at BU don’t object to his vision. They embrace it. They don’t oppose its establishment in universities. That’s their goal. Their anger isn’t with his ideology’s intellectual and ethical poverty but with his personal failure to use the money and power given to him to institutionalize their vision across American universities, politics and culture.

Whether driven by moral hysteria, cynical careerism or fear of being labeled racist, this violation of scholarly ideals and liberal principles betrays the norms necessary for intellectual life and human flourishing. It courts disaster, at this moment especially, that universities can’t afford.

Mr. Decosimo is an associate professor of theology and ethics at Boston University.

Appeared in the September 29, 2023, print edition as 'How Ibram X. Kendi Broke Boston University'.
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