A professor of history and international relations, Kendi is a contributor at The Atlantic and CBS News. He is the author of The Black Campus Movement, which won the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize, and Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2016. At 34 years old, Kendi was the youngest ever winner of the NBA for Nonfiction. He grew up dreaming about playing in the NBA (National Basketball Association), and ironically he ended up joining the other NBA.

His third book, How to Be an Antiracist, debuted at #2 on the New York Times Bestseller List in August 2019 and made several Best Books of 2019 lists. His much anticipated fourth book with Jason Reynolds, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, debuted at # 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List in March 2020.

Kendi has published fourteen academic essays in books and academic journals, including The Journal of African American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of African American Studies, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture. He has published op-eds in numerous periodicals, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, London Review, Time, Salon, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Paris Review, Black Perspectives, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He commented on a series of international, national, and local media outlets, such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Al Jazeerah, PBS, BBC, Democracy Now, and Sirius XM.

Kendi strives to be a hardcore antiracist and soft-core vegan. He enjoys joking it up with friends and family, partaking in African American culture, weight-lifting, reading provocative books, discussing the issues of the day with open-minded people, and hoping and pressing for the day the New York Knicks will win an NBA championship and for the day this nation and world will be ruled by the best of humanity.

In 2013, he changed his middle name from Henry to Xolani (meaning “Peace” in Zulu) and surname from Rogers to Kendi when he wed Sadiqa Kendi, a pediatric emergency physician from Albany, Georgia. They chose their new name together and unveiled “Kendi,” meaning “loved one” in Meru, to their family and friends at their wedding.

Kendi was born in 1982 to parents who came of age during the Black power movement in New York City. They were student activists and Christians inspired by Black liberation theology. While Kendi was in high school, his family moved from Jamaica, Queens, to Manassas, Virginia. He traveled further south and attended Florida A&M University, where he majored in journalism. He initially aspired for a career in sports journalism, freelancing for several Florida newspapers, and interning at USA Today Sports Weekly, as well as in the sports sections of the Mobile Register and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. By the end of his tenure at FAMU, he had become alienated from sports journalism and increasingly interested in engaging in racial justice work. He picked up a second major in African American Studies and graduated in 2004.

After working for a time as a journalist at The Virginian Pilot, Kendi pursued his graduate studies. At 27 years old, he earned his doctoral degree in African American Studies from Temple University in 2010. The year before, Kendi began his career as an assistant professor of African American history at SUNY Oneonta in upstate New York, before moving down the road to SUNY Albany, and then to the University of Florida, and now AU. In 2017, he became a full professor, the highest professorial rank, at 34 years old. Kendi was the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C., until he assumed the role of director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University in July 2020.

Dr. Edward Taylor, Kendi’s conversation partner for the evening, is vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs at the University of Washington, where he oversees educational opportunities that advance and deepen the undergraduate experience. Dr. Taylor is a professor in the UW’s College of Education, which he joined in 1995. His research and teaching center on comparative education in the U.S. and South Africa, moral dimensions of education and integrative education, and leadership in education and social justice. He has written, taught and presented extensively on these topics. He co-edited Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education, and his co-authored books include Transformative Conversations: A Guide to Mentoring Communities Among Colleagues in Higher Education and Inside the Undergraduate Teaching Experience: The University of Washington’s Growth in Faculty Teaching Study.