Spike Lee, Ice T, and LeVar Burton Among 8 Du Bois Medal Recipients

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee and Grammy Award winning rapper Ice T will be among eight recipients of the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research announced in a press release on Monday.

The honorees will be presented with the medals during a ceremony in Sanders Theatre on Oct. 1.

The W.E.B. Du Bois Medal is Harvard’s highest honor in African and African American studies and recognizes people who have made significant contributions to African and African American culture, according to the Hutchins Center website. Past awardees include Muhammad Ali, Harry Belafonte and Laverne Cox.

The Center announced the eight recipients last year and originally scheduled the medal ceremony for October 2023. However, the ceremony was postponed for a year.

Director of the Hutchins Center Henry Louis Gates, Jr. lauded the medal recipients and “their unwavering commitments to combating racism, sexism, and xenophobia, to protecting the freedom of thought and expression, and to celebrating the rich history and cultures of people of African descent throughout our rich diaspora.”

The full list of honorees also includes: Emmy Award-winning actor LeVar Burton, legal scholar and activist Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, former Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, Studio Museum Director Thelma Golden, entrepreneur and philanthropist Strive Masiyiwa, and Colombia Vice President Francia Márquez Mina.

The founders of Harvard’s Kuumba Singers — former Cambridge Mayor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72 and Linda A. Jackson Sowell ‘73 — were also awarded Du Bois Medals at a previous ceremony to celebrate the music group’s 50th anniversary.

Among the awardees, Crenshaw is known for popularizing critical race theory, a field of legal studies that examines the relationship between race and the law. The field, which was shaped in part at Harvard Law School, has become a flashpoint of conservative politics in recent years.

Márquez Mina went from working as a housekeeper to becoming Colombia’s first Black vice president. Márquez has also dedicated a large part of her career to environmental activism, leading women on a 350-mile march to Bogotá to protest illegal gold mining on indigenous territory.

And Delaney-Smith served as Harvard’s women’s basketball head coach for 40 seasons, becoming the winningest coach of any sport in Ivy League history. The press release also touted her commitment to Title IX activism.

Glenn H. Hutchins ’77, the founder of the Hutchins Family Foundation which established the Hutchins Center with a $15 million donation, said in the press release that the awardees’ accomplishments “have created new standards in academia, education, sports, the arts, entertainment, and business.”

“In addition to celebrating their achievements, our awards ceremony seeks to share their example with the many students who are able to join us, plus the broader community, and beyond,” Hutchins added. “This is a group that inspires us all to persist in our work of bending the arc of history toward justice.”

—Staff writer Neeraja S. Kumar can be reached at neeraja.kumar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @neerajasrikumar.

—Staff writer Annabel M. Yu can be reached at annabel.yu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @annabelmyu.