Professor Gates To Give Prestigious Lecture

DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. has been selected the 31st Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities for the National

Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The lecture, established in 1972, is awarded annually and is considered the highest honor bestowed by the federal government in the field of humanities.

The NEH is an independent, federal grant-giving agency that supports research, education and public programs in the humanities.

“It’s certainly one of the greatest honors of my career, and it makes me proud to be representing the University,” Gates said of his award.

He said he is unsure what he will speak about in the lecture, scheduled for March 22, 2002 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington, D.C. The lecture is open to the public and admission is free.

“Professor Gates joins a very distinguished company. The two I remember from Harvard in recent years to have been invited were Emily Vermuele and Bud Bailyn. You don’t get much more distinguished than that.” Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles said of Gates’ appointment to the lectureship.

Gates was selected by the National Council on the Humanities, the 26-member advisory board of the NEH in March, 2001, based on his “significant scholarly contributions to the humanities and [his] ability to communicate the knowledge and wisdom of the humanities in a broadly appealing way.”

“Through his outstanding scholarship in African American history and literature, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has helped shape the field of African American studies,” NEH Chairman Bruce Cole said in a press release announcing the lecture.

Previous Jefferson lecturers have been Arthur Miller, James McPherson, Caroline Walker Bynum, Bernard Bailyn, Stephen Toulmin, Toni Morrison, Vincent Scully, Gwendolyn Brooks, Bernard Knox, Walker Percy, Cleanth Brooks, Sydney Hook, Barbara Tuchman, Saul Bellow, John Hope Franklin, Robert Penn Warren, Erik Erikson, and Lionel Trilling.

Gates has been a member of the Harvard Faculty since 1991 and is currently the director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard.

He is considered a prominent but controversial contributor to Afro-American studies and his work is generally centered around African and African-American literary criticism and history, cultural studies and literary theory. His works include Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars (1992) and The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988). He has also written Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the ‘Racial’ Self (1987), and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (1997). Gates was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 1981, and was included in Time Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans” list in 1997.

Gates appointment to the lectureship comes at a trying time for the Afro-American Studies department at Harvard. Rumors have circulated that Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 has been considering leaving Harvard for Princeton after a meeting with University President Lawrence H. Summers earlier this fall.