Philanthropists Joanna and Daniel Rose have donated funds to Yale University to create the Henry Louis Gates Jr. Lectures. Professor Gates is a 1973 alumnus of Yale and currently serves as Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and is director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.
The first Henry Louis Gates Jr. Lecture was delivered by Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, and a close friend of professor Gates. Speaking at the inaugural event, Dr. Gates stated, “It is difficult for me to think of a greater honor in the life of a Yale alumnus than to have one’s alma mater create a lecture in one’s name.”
A video of the lecture, entitled, “Being Du Bois: Lessons in the Management of Identities” can be seen below.
