bram X. Kendi has done as he promised. In 2020, freshly anointed as the director of Boston University’s new Center for Antiracist Research (CAR), Kendi announced his intention to “transform how racial research is done.” Previously, “research” had been understood to involve collecting data, analyzing trends and gathering new insights through the careful application of sustained thought. But these expectations were hallmarks of white supremacy. This week, as allegations of wanton mismanagement emerge from Kendi’s staff, it appears that what it means to do “racial research” has indeed been transformed: it now entails taking vast sums of other people’s money, then using it to produce almost nothing.

And in this, Kendi is an expert. Amid the orgy of performative guilt that followed the death of George Floyd, CAR amassed $43 million in funding, including a $10 million donation from then-CEO of then-Twitter Jack Dorsey. Three years later, the Boston Globe reports, the fruits of this investment include the Emancipator (an online magazine featuring such masterworks as the comicstrip Everything’s Racist) and some short essays collected over the course of a year. They conspicuously do not include a graduate degree program, an “American Antiracist Society,” or a database on racial disparities. All of these and more were supposed to materialize under Kendi’s leadership; one former staffer described the Racial Data Tracker as a “centerpiece” of the organization’s mission.

That mission is now being “transformed” as well. Last week, Kendi laid off between twenty and thirty of CAR’s employees, around half of the total. Reports from those involved indicate that the whole affair has been an exercise in burning cash. “The Center has very, very much failed to deliver on its promise,” said Spencer Piston, the faculty head of CAR’s policy branch. “It’s been a colossal waste of millions of dollars.” From the start, it barely seems to have occurred to Kendi that he would be expected to produce something in exchange for the lavish investment of funds and attention with which he’s been favored. “To the best of my knowledge, there is no good faith commitment to fulfilling funded research projects at CAR,” wrote BU Sociology Professor and former CAR employee Saida Grundy in 2021.