EXCLUSIVE: Feds Paid Top ‘Anti-Racism’ Activist To Speak With Bureaucrats Then Deleted The Recording

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted a recording of talk given to its staffers by leading “anti-racism” scholar Ibram X. Kendi in 2022, according to internal documents obtained by the 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation.

Kendi spoke at the 2022 iteration of NIH’s “Big Read” event to discuss his best-selling book “How to Be an Antiracist,” according to an NIH webpage. His speaking arrangement came with conditions, however, as documentsobtained by Open The Books and provided to the DCNF show that Kendi’s publisher mandated that the recording of the event be deleted after 30 days and that precautions be taken to avoid the recording from being copied or downloaded.

“NIH has neither produced a copy of the video nor a clear understanding of whether it’s been retained for the public record,” Open The Books spokesperson Christopher Neefus told the DCNF. “We’re left only to draw inferences from the contract addendum, which instructs the agency to encrypt the video to prevent copying and then ‘remove’ it after 30 days.”

The NIH published a blog post following the talk, giving some clues into what was discussed.

“Looking at racism through a historical lens, Pérez-Stable and Kendi discussed the interweaving of the science on race, class, and racism; social and cultural beliefs; and the policies that bind them,” the post reads. “In this respect, Pérez-Stable introduced the research NIH is undertaking to better understand the impact of racism on health conditions, as well as the myriad social constructs that contribute to racial and ethnic health disparities. Kendi emphasized that to eliminate these disparities and to create a healthier society, we need to shift the focus of research from culture and/or the behavior of certain racial groups to investigating ‘policies and practices and conditions that are actually causing…racial health disparities.’”