Howard University Announces the Hiring of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi as Director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study

January 30, 2025 at 15:45 PM EST

Washington, D.C., Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WASHINGTON, DC – Howard University announced today the appointment of Ibram X. Kendi, PhD, one of the world’s leading historians and most widely read scholars, as the director of the newly established Howard University Institute for Advanced Study. Built on the highest standards of intellectual inquiry, the institute is dedicated to interdisciplinary study advancing research of importance to the global African Diaspora, including inquiry into race, technology, racism, climate change, and disparities. Dr. Kendi’s appointment and this new institute are a continuation of the university’s long history in study and scholarly research on the diasporic experience of Black and Brown people.

“Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s exceptional scholarship and unwavering commitment to social justice align perfectly with Howard University’s mission and values as we deepen our scholarship on the African Diaspora,” said Anthony K. Wutoh, Ph.D., R.Ph., Howard University’s provost and chief academic officer. “We are confident that under his leadership, the new institute will become a beacon of excellence and a catalyst for transformative change.”

The Howard University Institute for Advanced Study will engage thinkers and scholars at Howard University, in the country, and around the world in addressing deep and persisting inequities in areas including, but not limited to, technology, the environment, healthcare, the economy, governance, education, and the criminal legal system. The institute will revolve around a competitive residential fellowship program where an annual international class of fellows pursues impactful projects across disciplines and fields. Each fellow will be paired with a Howard student to foster research and mentorship. The fellowship program will also be open to Howard’s faculty.

“I could not be prouder and more excited to join this illustrious and historic university,” Kendi said. “I have had my eye on the Mecca my entire career, studying its history and witnessing what Howards means to the culture. There are so many faculty on this campus whose work I deeply admire. There are so many talented students on this campus whom I am excited to support. There are so many alumni who walked those grounds and went on to shape the people, cultures, and institutions I love. This is the most fulfilling career choice I have ever made. I can’t wait to get started on our new institute.”

The establishment of this institute is both a continuation and expansion of Howard University’s long-standing mission to study and combat racial injustice. In the 20th century, Howard faculty laid the intellectual groundwork for the struggle for racial justice. This included the development of legal strategies for the fight against segregation by Howard University College of Law deans Charles Hamilton Houston and William Hastie, along with alumnus Thurgood Marshall. Dr. Francis Cecil Sumner, the Howard professor known as the “father of Black psychology,” supervised the iconic “doll test” that was instrumental in the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision outlawing segregation. Literary giants like Howard professor Sterling Brown nurtured writers such as alumna Toni Morrison, while faculty members including philosopher Alain Locke, sociologist E. Franklin Frazier, Lucy Diggs Stowe, historian Rayford Logan, and political scientist Eric Williams provided crucial contributions in their fields.

Dr. Kendi’s groundbreaking body of accessible scholarship has profoundly influenced contemporary discourse on racism. He is the author of sixteen books, including the international bestseller, “How to Be an Antiracist.” He also authored “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Now a popular documentary on Netflix, it won Best Documentary from the African American Film Critics Association and was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Dr. Kendi co-edited the #1 New York Times best seller “Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019,” a finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. He has published three children’s books, adapted from the work of Howard’s own Zora Neale Hurston (A.A. ’24, including last year’s “Barracoon,” his tenth New York Times best seller. His first book, “The Black Campus Movement,” a history of Black student activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize.

Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Dr. Kendi is an alumnus of Florida A&M University and Temple University.

Media Contact: Carol Wilkerson, Director of Media Relations
carol.wilkerson@howard.edu; Cell:202-288-7071

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Howard University Announces the Hiring of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi as Director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study

Carol Wilkerson
Howard University
202-288-7071
carol.wilkerson@howard.edu

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Howard University Announces the Hiring of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi as Director of the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study

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