National Bar Association Names an Award to Honor a West Virginia University Administrator

The Major General Kenneth D. Gray Excellence in Jurisprudence Award will recognize a leader, jurist, or practitioner who has exhibited distinctive and exemplary service to their community and or nation.

Harvard Business School Honors Its Black Alumnae

The new website honoring Black women graduates was established in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebration of coeducation in the full-time MBA program at Harvard Business School.

Prestigious Honors for Two African American Academics

Marie Chisholm-Burns dean of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, received a reward for her research and the late Julius Chambers received the Spirit of North Carolina Award.

African American Debaters Make History

Nadia Lewis and Jamila Ahmed, African American students at Fresno State University in California, placed first and second at the recent Henry Clay Invitational Debates held at the University of Kentucky.

NYU’s Spike Lee Awarded the Gish Prize

Darren Walker, chair of the prize committee, stated, "We honor Spike Lee for his brilliance and unwavering courage in using film to challenge conventional thinking, and for the passion for justice that he feels deep in his soul."

Five Black Scholars Win Prestigious Awards

The honorees are President M. Christopher Brown II of Alcorn State University, Tryan L. McMickens of Suffolk University, Charlene Johnson of South Carolina State, Donald Mitchell Jr. of Grand Valley State, and Dikgang Moseneke of South Africa.

Duke Art Historian Honored by the Smithsonian Institution

Richard J. Powell received the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.

Honors for Two African American Educators

Urmeka Jefferson of the University of Missouri received an award from the National Association of Neonatal Nurses and Terence Hicks of Prairie View A&M University was honored by teacher's education group.

Regina Benjamin to Receive the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism

Dr. Benjamin is the former Surgeon General of the United States and now holds the NOLA.com/Times Picayune Endowed Chair in Public Health Sciences at Xavier University in New Orleans.

Duke University Scholar Wins Anthropology Award

Lee D. Baker, professor of cultural anthropology at Duke, has been selected to receive the Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Critical Study of North America by the Society for the Anthropology on North America.

Honors for Two Black Educators in Mississippi

Mary L. Vaughn of Mississippi State is being honored by the National College Testing Association and Paul Tchounwou of Jackson State will be presented with an award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Jazz Educator Honored at the Kennedy Center

Nathan Davis, professor emeritus of music at the University of Pittsburgh, received the BNY Mellon Jazz 2013 Living Legacy Award honoring jazz masters who have achieved distinction in jazz performance and education.

Nontombi Naomi Tutu Wins Social Justice Award

Nontombi Naomi Tutu, a student at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School and daughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, received the Otis Social Justice Award from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.

Towson University Scholar Honored by the National Institutes of Health

Sharon Jones-Eversley, an assistant professor of family studies, has been honored with the distinguished PRIDE Award. PRIDE is an acronym for the Program to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research.

Patricia Hill Collins to Be Awarded the Gittler Prize

Patricia Hill Collins, a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park, has been selected to receive the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize from Brandeis University for outstanding scholarly contributions in the field of racial, ethnic, and religious relations.

University of Kansas Historian Wins Prestigious Book Prize

Randal Jelks, associate professor of American studies and African American studies at the University of Kansas, has been awarded the 2013 Lillian Smith Book Award for his biography of long-time Morehouse College president Benjamin Elijah Mays.

An Endowed Scholarship Fund Honors Three Pioneering Emory Professors

The Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta has established an endowed scholarship program to provide financial aid for students in its Black Church Studies Program.

Two Black Scientists Named Fellows of the American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society recently named its new class of fellows for 2013. Of the 96 new fellows, it appears that only two are African Americans. They will be inducted as fellows at the ACS annual meeting in Indianapolis on September 9.

South African Scholar Is the First International Winner of the Spendlove Prize

Jonathan D. Jansen, vice chancellor of the University of the Free State, was named the recipient of the 2013 Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance, awarded by the University of California at Merced.

Emory University Professor Wins Book Award

Kevin Young, the Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta, has won the 2013 PEN Open Book Award from the PEN American Center. The Harvard University graduate is the author of seven collections of poetry.

University of Tennessee Professor Named the Physician of the Year

Samuel Dagogo-Jack, professor of medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, has been chosen as the Physician of the Year in internal medicine by the National Medical Association.

Texas Tech Scholar Named Teacher of the Year in Spanish and Portuguese

Comfort Pratt, professor of bilingual education and diversity studies at Texas Tech University, was named the Outstanding Teacher of the Year at the college and university level by the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese.

Two African American Women Win Academic Awards

Crystal Sanders, an assistant professor of history at Penn State, won two awards for her doctoral dissertation on Black women in Mississippi and Sylvaia Schell of the University of Georgia was honored for her work to promote diversity in international education.

Leroy Keith Jr. Given the Title of President Emeritus of Morehouse College

Leroy Keith Jr served as the eighth president of Morehouse College in Atlanta from 1987 to 1994. Now, nearly two decades after his retirement, the college's board of trustees is bestowing on him the title of president emeritus.

University of Maryland Award Will Honor Sports Journalists Who Work for Racial Equality

The award is named for Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith, two African American journalists who documented Jackie Robinson's effort to racially integrate Major League Baseball.

Master’s Degree Student Wins Award for Best First Fiction

R. Kayeen Thomas, a student in the master of divinity program at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., was the recipient of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award for First Fiction at the 15th annual Harlem Book Fair in New York City.

Two Educators to Be Inducted Into the Iowa African American Hall of Fame

The IAAHF was founded in 1995 in Des Moines but is now located in the Black Cultural Center at Iowa State University. Since its inception, 56 members have been inducted into the IAAHF. This year two of the three new members have ties to higher education.

Two African American Scholars Honored for Service

Cheryl Swanier of Fort Valley State University was honored by the National Center for Women and Information Technology and M. Christopher Brown II, president of Alcorn State University will be honored in November by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities.

Morehouse College Graduate Wins the Caine Prize for African Writing

Tope Folarin, a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta and a Rhodes Scholar, was honored for his short story entitled "Miracle," about a blind healing prophet who pays a visit to an evangelical church in Texas.

Williams College Scholar Wins Dissertation Prize

Candis Watt-Smith, an assistant professor of political science at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has been selected to receive the Best Dissertation Award from the race and ethnic politics section of the American Political Science Association.

Three African Americans Presented With the National Medal of Arts

Ernest J. Gaines is the writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. Joan Myers Brown is the founder of the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts and the Philadelphia Dance Company and Allen Toussaint is a New Orleans-born musician, composer, and record producer.

Two African Americans Receive Top Honors

Michelle Johnson of Boston University was named Educator of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. Benjamin Quillan of California State University received the top honor given by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

Anna Deavere Smith Awarded the National Humanities Medal

Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and playwright and University Professor in the Department of Performance Studies in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She is the only African American among the 12 individuals honored with the medal this year.

Two African American Professors Named NEA Jazz Masters

Richard Davis of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Anthony Braxton of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, will be honored as 2014 Jazz Masters by the National Endowment for the Arts next January at a ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Two African Americans Honored With Prestigious Awards

Professor Linda Florence Callahan of North Carolina A&T State University is being honored by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and Alcorn State University President M. Christopher Brown II won an award from the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity.

Keith Wilson Honored for His Work in Multicultural Rehabilitation

Keith B. Wilson, dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, has been selected to receive the 2013 Virgie Winston-Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association for Multicultural Rehabilitation Concerns.

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