Sacramento State asks profs to cancel class for for antiracism-themed convocation featuring Ibram Kendi
Sacramento State hosted Ibram X. Kendi and other social justice activists for their antiracism-themed convocation.
The university asked that students and community members cancel all events on the afternoon of the convocation.
California State University-Sacramento hosted an antiracism-themed convocation featuring leading academics and activists.
Sacramento State named its convocation “Advancing Our Commitment to Antiracism” and featured Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research Director Ibram X. Kendi, author of the bestselling book How to Be an Antiracist. The university also welcomed Shaun Harper, director of the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center, as well as dozens of other antiracism activists.
[RELATED: University asks students to ‘pledge to practice antiracist behaviors’ in full-throated endorsement of BLM movement]
“The Convocation is a teaching moment, a moment when we pause from traditional teaching and teach in a new way,” said Sacramento State President Robert Nelson. “We are coming together to teach and to affirm that Black Lives Matter. Let’s come together as a teaching university, and let’s teach each other and the world what it means to be antiracist.”
The gathering “is an opportunity to hear from national experts on antiracism and the impact of structural and systemic racism in higher ed,” added Sacramento State diversity officer Diana Tate Vermeire.
The university’s administration recommended that no other meetings, classes or university events be held on the afternoon of convocation.
As Campus Reform previously reported, Kendi was recently in hot water for pouncing on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s family.
[RELATED: Professor pounces on Amy Coney Barrett’s family: ‘Some White colonizers adopted Black children’]
Barrett and her husband, both of whom are White, adopted two Black children from Haiti. Kendi argued that some White “colonizers” adopted Black children out of a sense of cultural superiority, as “props in their lifelong pictures of denial.”
Over the summer, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University $10 million and praised his work.
[RELATED: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donates $10 million to Boston University’s ‘Center for Antiracist Research’]
Campus Reform reached out to Sacramento State for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft
