(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) It was revealed that in September 2020, Boston University [BU] approved a $600,000 mortgage to an unnamed professor who is connected to a trust that is controlled by Ibram X. Kendi’s brother-in-law, Macharia Edmonds.
Just weeks before that, Kendi launched his Center for Antiracist Research at the same institution, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The news source wrote that the mortgage helped to cover the down payment for a $4.56 million luxury penthouse triplex — the “best of sophisticated Boston living” — the real estate site Redfin stated.
In addition to that, the Beacon obtained public real estate records that revealed that the trust is controlled by Edmonds, a former Barack Obama campaign official and attorney who now serves as a Global Content Policy Lead for YouTube in San Francisco. He controls the trust on behalf of its unnamed beneficiary.
It was later revealed by BU spokeswoman Rachel Lapal Cavallario that the beneficiary of the trust is a professor at the university who “applied for and received the loan under a longstanding university program to assist senior faculty with their housing needs.”
Cavallario declined to provide the person’s name, the interest rate of the loan, how much has been repaid and any documentation about the university’s faculty home loan program.
Edmonds is connected to BU only through Kendi, who is married to his sister, Sadiga, an associate professor at the university.
Dean Zerbe, a former senior counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, asked a rhetorical question regarding why BU is giving away loans to its professors in the first place.
“There are institutions that actually do provide loans. They’re called banks. People like to get loans at banks, not at universities. It raises a fundamental question of why did you not get a loan from a bank?” Zerbe said.
He then explained the reason why it happened.
“The reality is, overwhelmingly, when we look at these loans, they are sweetheart deals and they would not have gotten them from a bank. And that’s the problem with them,” Zerbe said.
