Ibram Xolani Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers; August 13, 1982) is an American author, professor, anti-racism activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in the U.S. He is author of books including Stamped from the Beginning, How to Be an Antiracist, Antiracist Baby, and Chain of Ideas. He has been interviewed by such figures as Stephen Colbert and Oprah Winfrey, and in 2019, the New York Times referred to him as "one of the country’s most in-demand commentators on racism." Kendi was also included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
In July 2020, he founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University where he as director until 2025. An internal investigation was launched into potential financial mismanagement of the center. Kendi was cleared of financial mismanagement, but the center underwent an audit regarding his leadership and the center's culture. In 2021, Kendi was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program award. In January 2025, Howard University announced that Kendi would join its faculty and lead its newly founded Institute for Advanced Study, created to investigate the African diaspora. In 2026, he was appointed as the inaugural Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair in History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University.
Early life and education Kendi was born in the Jamaica neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, as Ibram Henry Rogers, to middle-class African-American parents, Carol Rogers, a former business analyst for a health-care organization, and Larry Rogers, a tax accountant and then hospital chaplain. Larry and Carol were both deeply religious and profoundly influenced by black liberation theology. They met as student activists. Both of Kendi's parents are now retired and work as Methodist ministers. He has an older brother, Akil.
From third to eighth grade, Kendi attended private Christian schools in Queens. In 1997, then age 15, Kendi moved with his family to Manassas, Virginia, after having attended John Bowne High School as a freshman. He attended Stonewall Jackson High School, named for Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, for his final three years of high school. He graduated in 2000. In 2020, a petition circulated calling for the renaming of the high school. Warren Christian, a direct descendant of Jackson, called for the school to be rechristened in honor of Kendi. The school was instead ultimately renamed for Arthur Reed, a longtime employee.
In 2005, Kendi received dual B.S. degrees in African American studies and magazine production from Florida A&M University. One of his professors, who taught a course on African history, described him as a student who sat at the front of class, participated in lively debate with other students, and was "engaged and attentive." Originally intending to become a sports journalist or news broadcaster, he interned for both The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Mobile Register as an undergrad. After these internships, he became more interested in pursuing a career that involved African American studies. He also interned with the Tallahassee Democrat and wrote a weekly column for Florida A&M's student newspaper, The Famuan. His Famuan column was discontinued at the request of the Democrat after he wrote an article claiming European people had invented HIV/AIDS to fight off the "extinction" of their race. According to the Washington Post, Kendi realized in college that "judging white people as a group is as racist as judging black people as a group."
Kendi continued his studies at Temple University where he was advised by Ama Mazama, earning an M.A. in 2007 and a Ph.D. in 2010, both in African American studies. Kendi's dissertation was titled "The Black Campus Movement: An Afrocentric Narrative History of the Struggle to Diversify Higher Education, 1965–1972."
Career Teaching From 2009 to 2012, Kendi was an assistant professor of history in the department of Africana and Latino Studies within the department of history at State University of New York at Oneonta. From 2012 to 2015, Kendi was an assistant professor of Africana Studies in the department of Africana Studies as well as the department of history at University at Albany, SUNY. During this time, from 2013 to 2014, Kendi was a visiting scholar in the department of Africana Studies at Brown University, where he taught courses as a visiting assistant professor in the fall of 2014.
From 2015 to 2017, Kendi was an assistant professor in the history department and African American Studies program at the University of Florida.
In 2017, Kendi became a professor of history and international relations at the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and School of International Service (SIS) at American University in Washington, D.C. In September 2017, Kendi founded the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, serving as its executive director. The same night that Kendi publicly introduced the center, someone vandalized American University by posting fliers depicting the Confederate flag with cotton balls stuck to them around campus.
In June 2020, it was announced that Kendi would join Boston University as a professor of history. Upon accepting the position, Kendi agreed to step down from the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University and relocate to Boston University, and become the founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. When he was hired at Boston University, Kendi was awarded its Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in the Humanities, whose only prior recipient was author, activist, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
During the 2020–2021 academic year, Kendi served as the Frances B. Cashin Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University
In 2020, Kendi founded Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research under a five-year charter. In August 2020, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to the center, and the center continued to receive $43 million in grants and gifts over the next three years.
The center's Racial Data Lab produced the COVID Racial Data Tracker from April 2020 to March 2021, highlighting that Black Americans died at 1.4 times the rate of White Americans during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, inspired by 19th-century abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator, the center launched a news website called The Emancipator in partnership with Bina Venkataraman of The Boston Globe. In June 2022, the center published essays from 35 Anti-Bigotry Fellows, which provided legal and statistical analysis on various forms of discrimination.
In September 2023, the center reorganized and laid off several of the center's staff, prompting Boston University to open an inquiry "focused on the center's culture and its grant management practices", later expanded "to include the Center's management culture". On September 24, 2023, Stephanie Saul of The New York Times wrote about concerns surrounding the center's management and focus. Saul cited comments made by former staff and faculty members criticizing the center's leadership, productivity, ambitions, and stewardship of grants. During the investigation, Boston University professors attested to the center's issues, with one alleging that the center "was being mismanaged" and another commenting, "I don't know where the money is." Steph Solis of Axios noted that the scandal "cast a shadow" over the center, while Tyler Austin Harper, writing for The Washington Post, characterized Kendi's work at the center as "grift". In November 2023, Boston University announced that its audit had "found no issues with how CAR's finances were handled, showing that its expenditures were appropriately charged to their respective grant and gift accounts." In the same announcement, the university stated that it had hired the management consulting firm Korn Ferry to conduct an audit on the center's workplace culture and Kendi's leadership. Culminating in January 2024, that audit did not lead to punitive action. Rather it led Kendi and Boston University to modify the center's organizational structure.
In January 2025 Kendi was hired by Howard University to serve as director of its new Institute for Advanced Study, focusing on interdisciplinary research of the African diaspora. Following Kendi's departure, Boston University did not renew the charter for the Center for Antiracist Research.
Writing
Kendi has published essays in both books and academic journals, including The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of African American Studies, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. Kendi is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic.
He is the author or co-author of fifteen books, including eight children's books. Some of these are different versions of the same book adapted for younger age groups. Additionally, he contributed to the book Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019, which he also compiled and edited alongside Keisha N. Blain.
Kendi's books include: The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972 Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America How to Be an Antiracist STAMPED: Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason Reynolds Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You, co-authored with Jason Reynolds Antiracist Baby, illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky Be Antiracist: A Journal for Awareness, Reflection, and Action Goodnight Racism, illustrated by Cbabi Bayoc How to Raise an Antiracist Magnolia Flower, based on the story by Zora Neale Hurston and illustrated by Loveis Wise How To Be a (Young) Anti-Racist, co-authored with Nic Stone The (Young) Antiracist’s Workbook, co-authored with Nic Stone The Making of Butterflies, based on the story by Zora Neale Hurston, illustrated by Kah Yangni Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America, illustrated by Joel Christian Gill Barracoon: Adapted for Young Readers, an adaptation of the non-fiction book by Zora Neale Hurston
Kendi has said that his book, Stamped from the Beginning, was initially rejected by more than fifty literary agents. Nevertheless, the book was eventually published in 2016 by Nation Books, and it earned Kendi the National Book Award for Nonfiction that year. He was the youngest author to ever win the prize. Titled after an 1860 speech given by Jefferson Davis at the U.S. Senate, the book builds around the stories of Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis.
How to Be an Antiracist