Critical Race Theory About to See Its Day in Court The nation’s current anti-discrimination law does not make discriminatory distinctions promoted by anti-racist Ibram X. Kendi, the Andrew W. Mellon professor in the Humanities at Boston University, and would read Kendi’s proposal as absurd as claiming that there’s a meaningful difference between good theft and bad theft. Pictured: Kendi visits BuzzFeed's "AM To DM" on March 10, 2020, in New York City. (Photo: Jason Mendez/Getty Images) As recently as last summer, few people outside academia had heard of critical race theory, whose central claim is that racism, not liberty, is the founding value and guiding vision of American society. Then, President Donald Trump issued an executive order last September banning the teaching of this “malign ideology” to federal employees and federal contractors.