Goldwater Institute Discovers ASU Paid Fallen “Anti-Racist” Kendi $30,000 For 1 Hour Speech

The Goldwater Institute has uncovered just how much Arizona State University’s (ASU) College of Liberal Arts and Sciences paid to host controversial author Ibram X. Kendi for an evening of race-based political punditry in April 2023.

It turns out Kendi, previously known as Henry Rogers, was paid a whopping $30,000 for his one-hour speech, and $5,000 for his one-night trip.

According to the Goldwater Institute, it took “nearly a year for ASU to provide this information in response to a public records request submitted by the Goldwater Institute shortly after the event last April. But it took repeated follow-ups with the university, including sending a legal demand letter, to uncover the documents revealing the university’s fat paycheck to the fallen hero of the far left.”

The Goldwater Institute is referring to Kendi’s fall from racial grace due to the fact that Kendi was forced to lay off “more than half of the staff at his Center for Antiracist Research. Boston University, where the center is housed, has now opened an inquiry into how it was run. Allegations include poor pay, employee exploitation, the failure to produce any significant research and the mismanagement of $43 million in donations,” according to the Washington Post.

Records obtained by the Goldwater Institute show that Kendi received the $5,000 for a “Travel Buyout” to “cover his apparently extravagant travel expenses (he could spend that money however he chose). And the university also forked out an additional $4,840.99 for other event-related expenses. The most significant of those were $2,160 in radio advertising and $2,063.45 in security costs, including payments for uniformed security, plain-clothes security, and metal detectors.”

Kendi, author of five bestselling books including “How to Be Antiracist,” was the keynote speaker at the annual A. Wade Smith and Elsie Moore Memorial Lecture on Race Relations.

Goldwater reports that “last fall, Kendi’s Boston University Center for Antiracist Research laid off at least 15 staff members due to financial mismanagement. But Kendi himself does not appear to be in personal financial straits, as he has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees alone over the past few years, in addition to his salary and book deals.”

As previously reported by the Arizona Daily Independent, Kendi’s brief talk at ASU was preceded by the now obligatory land acknowledgement. Land acknowledgments are politically correct statements claiming that activities are taking place, or institutions, businesses and even homes are built, on land previously owned by indigenous peoples.

Kendi was the 25th speaker in the lecture series, following such other notable liberals as actor Danny Glover and philosopher Dr. Cornel West.