Jim Banks: The Navy Should Apologize for Propping Up Ibram X. Kendi, Whose Antiracist Research Center Is Under Investigation

By Kristina Wong, Breitbart News

House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN) called on the Navy to apologize for propping up Ibram X. Kendi, the critical race theorist whose center is now under investigation for financial mismanagement.

“The Navy put an anti-American radical and scammer on their official reading list. Henry Rogers, better known as Ibram X. Kendi, has always been an obvious fraud and the Navy should immediately apologize to Sailors for propping up a far-left, extremist huckster,” Banks said in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News.

Boston University announced last week it was launching an inquiry into its Center for Antiracist Research, led by Kendi, after the center laid off more than half of its staff amid allegations of dysfunction and squandering $43 million in donations.

One former staff, Saida Grundy, a Boston University professor who worked at the center from fall 2020 to spring 2021, told the Boston Globe, “I don’t know where the money is.”

Former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday had put Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist on his recommended reading list for all sailors in 2021, after a widespread belief among the left that a January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol had to do with racism.

Banks, a then-naval reservist, in June 2021 grilled Gilday on why he included the book, which argued that capitalism and the Navy was racist, on his reading list.

Gilday told Banks, “Here’s what I know, Congressman. There’s racism in the United States Navy.”

He had also defended Kendi’s arguments, saying, “Sir, I’d have to understand the context in which the statements were made. I’m not going to sit here and defend cherry-picked quotes from somebody’s book. This is a bigger issue than somebody’s book.”

Banks responded, “Admiral, I remain astonished that you put this book on a reading list and recommended that every sailor in the United States read it. I’m also surprised that you said you read it.”

Gilday defended Kendi, saying the book was worth reading for “his own journey as an African American in this country, what he’s experienced.”