Boston University is offering donors to the now-closed Center for Antiracist Research the opportunity to reallocate their unspent contributions to an initiative of their choosing.
Donors can reallocate their funds within BU or to Howard University, where the Center’s former director currently works.
Launched in 2020 amid nationwide conversations on racial justice with the mission of finding innovative ways to solve racial justice problems, the Center closed June 30. Director Ibram X. Kendi left BU in June to run the Howard University Institute for Advanced Study.
In CAR’s five-year run, the Center underwent a financial audit and a period of restructuring following concerns about management, transparency and mismanagement of funds.
BU Spokesperson Colin Riley said following CAR’s closure, BU Advancement has been facilitating a process of fund reallocations in collaboration with Kendi at Howard this semester. Working underneath BU Foundation Relations, the Office of Advancement helps manage philanthropic giving to the University.
BU Advancement provided information to donors regarding University initiatives in line with CAR’s values, Riley said, including the civil and human rights archives at the BU Libraries’ Special Collections, The Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground and the Newbury Center, which supports first generation students.
“We are contacting you because at the time of the Center’s closing, some of your donated funds were unspent, and we want to ensure that your contribution makes a meaningful impact aligned with the values you support,” the email to CAR donors, sent Oct. 16, reads.
BU Advancement has contacted “a couple thousand” donors and received responses from a “good percentage” of donors, Riley said. He declined to comment on the amount of unspent funds the center has leftover.
Daksh Dutt Mishra, a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Student Council, wrote in an email to The Daily Free Press that the closure of CAR was “a huge loss for BU in intangible ways.”
He added that the lack of a refund option for donors is frustrating.
“BU’s inability to return the same funds to the respective donors just added to the frustration and made it feel like greed was being prioritized over consideration,” Mishra wrote.
Aissatou Male, vice president of UMOJA: BU Black Student Union, said she hopes donors keep their funding within BU initiatives.
“Especially since the CAR Center is a resource mostly for BU students, I do think it would be best implemented here,” she said. “I don’t see the validity of just following where the director is going, rather than investing in the resources that it’s supposed to be helping.”
Male said she believes the HTC would be a strong recipient because the center puts its “resources into supporting marginalized communities.”
Student organizations on campus could also use the funding support, Male said.
“A lot of student orgs that are trying to support those marginalized communities are really struggling right now due to either the political climate, the cuts or even limitations in funding,” she said.
