Audit of anti-racist research center at Boston University comes up clean

Center of Antiracist Research (CAR) founding director Ibram X. Kendi announced in September that the center would lay off 19 employees to chart a new path, prompting concerns about grant management strategies.

An audit of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research (CAR) found no evidence to suggest an internal restructuring resulted from a mishandling of finances.

BU Today reported that in September, founding director Ibram X. Kendi said that the center would lay off 19 employees to chart a new course that would ensure its existence for decades to come. However, the layoffs refocused attention on the center’s administration, as well as raised concerns about its grant management strategies and whether employees charged expenditures to their respective accounts.

A significant concern was why a facility that garnered over $50 million failed to conduct more research with its funding. It’s worth noting that $30 million of CAR’s finances are endowed, and administrators can only use $1.2 million yearly. The remaining $20 million is limited and can only be spent in specific ways.

“As I have said from the beginning, the restructuring did not come from financial distress brought on by financial mismanagement, and the team of auditors validated this truth,” said Kendi. “We sought to put in place a new financially sustainable structure that will support CAR’s mission for the long term. We are glad to have this financial inquiry behind us and a financially sustainable model ahead of us.”

Kendi calls the layoffs “the hardest decision of my career” but said they had little option to preserve CAR’s viability and this essential work. “And we worked hard to ensure affected staff had extended notice and opportunities to transition into other places of employment,” he added, according to BU Today.

Six weeks following the shakeup, officials say several initiatives were completed or are well underway to assist the center in effectively pivoting toward its new path. 

Since the layoffs, BU has closely monitored all aspects of the center’s operation, including hiring an outside firm to begin meeting with CAR staff members to learn about the center’s workplace culture and climate under Kendi. Some issues under investigation are beginning to generate results, such as the audit, while others will take longer.

After the center’s reorganization, CAR will have a workforce of around half its initial size. It will transition away from staff and faculty executing CAR projects and programs to a structure in which fellows will be in residence at BU for nine months, conducting projects while participating in public events and contributing to The Emancipator, a digital publication focused on “explaining and identifying solutions to structural racism.”

With the financial audit completed, BU is now focusing on the funds the center obtained to ensure that CAR followed the mandatory reporting protocols stipulated in each one. Gloria Waters, vice president and associate provost for research at BU, will lead the effort, noting that 19 grants originated from outside foundations.

“We are making sure [CAR] provided what it was supposed to provide to its funding agencies — such as, were progress reports filed when they were supposed to be filed; were deliverables reported as required,” said Waters of her review, BU Today reported. “And we want to have the best practices and policies in place to assure all our funders that we are meeting their expectations.”

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