On January 6, 2026, CAm Board Member, Professor Henry Louis (Skip) Gates, Jr. (Clare College 1973) appeared on PBS, opening season twelve of his Emmy-nominated hit series Finding Your Roots, continuing a tradition of sparking meaningful conversations around history, identity, and connection. The show, which combines genealogy and genetics to uncover the family stories of well-known Americans, has helped to make Professor Gates a prominent figure in American Culture and one of the world’s favorite historians.
2026 has already been one of notable moments for Professor Gates. In January, he and his wife, Dr. Marial Iglesias Utset had an audience with Pope Leo XIV, an honor he described as “one of the most meaningful and deeply moving moments” of his life. Professor Gates is also the host and producer of a new four-part documentary “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History,” which premieres on PBS and WETA on February 3, 2026.
Last year, Professor Gates’s impact on the humanities was recognized with several major honors, including the Vilcek Prize for Excellence in Literary Scholarship, the Newberry Library Award, and an honorary doctorate from Yale University, awarded at its 324th commencement. Beyond television, he is also a prolific author, having written or co-authored more than 20 books across literary criticism, history, biography, and cultural studies.
We are proud to celebrate this scholar, storyteller, and icon whose work has helped generations better understand Black history and identity. An American literary scholar and Emmy Award–winning documentary filmmaker, Professor Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and directs the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Along the way, he has earned countless awards and honorary degrees, including recognition from the University of Cambridge.
We applaud all that Professor Gates has achieved and can only guess at the accomplishments ahead this year and beyond as his distinctive star continues to rise.
Learn more > https://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/people/henry-louis-gates-jr
"It's a stirring fact that our slave ancestors left behind not documents of property but an incredible amount of cultural wealth".
~ Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
We are delighted to acknowledge the dynamic author, educator, advocate, and scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs (Clare 2014, King’s 2017)—whose work invites us to rethink history and whose voices get heard. While at the University of Cambridge, Anna earned a master’s degree in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies and a PhD in Sociology, focusing on race and gender in the United States.
Her debut book, The Three Mothers (2021), shone a long-overdue spotlight on the women who raised Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin. The book became a New York Times bestseller, earned Editor’s Choice honors from both The New York Times and Amazon, and received widespread praise from outlets including Oprah Daily, People, and USA Today.
Her second book, Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us (2025), also a bestseller, builds on that momentum, challenging readers to question familiar narratives, notice what—and who—has been left out, and imagine a more honest and inclusive future.
Read CAm’s interview with Anna Malaika Tubbs > https://www.cantab.org/cam-homepage/anna-malaika-tubbs-clare-2014-king%E2%80%99s-2017-from-cambridge-to-cultural-changemaker
We salute Kwame Anthony Appiah (Clare 1972), a globally renowned philosopher and writer whose work spans ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of mind and language, and African intellectual history. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he joined the faculty in 2014, after previously holding the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professorship at Princeton.
Professor Appiah’s influence extends well beyond the classroom. Many know Professor Appiah’s distinctive voice by reading The Ethicist column in The New York Times Magazine, where he has been responding to readers' ethical dilemmas for more than a decade. In January 2022, he was elected President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his career has been marked by some of the highest honors in the humanities. These include the National Humanities Medal, presented at the White House in 2012, and in 2024, both the Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies and the Library of Congress’s John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. That same year, he was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society, an International Fellow of the British Academy, and an NYU Silver Professor.
Read CAm’s interview with Professor Appiah > https://www.cantab.org/25-years-25-stories-%E2%80%93-kwame-anthony-appiah-clare-1972-the-ethicist
“My motto is never give up – and never give up of doing good.”
~Carol Nkechi Ibe
Finally, we highlight and applaud the career of Carol Nkechi Ibe (Newnham 2015), a molecular biologist, educator, and trailblazer working at the intersection of science, education, and global equity. As a Gates Cambridge Scholar, Carol completed her PhD in Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, where her research focused on improving crop resilience and food security through the study of plant–microbe interactions. Her leadership has earned international recognition, including the 2019 Bill Gates Sr. Prize.
Born in the United States and raised in Nigeria, Carol studied microbiology before continuing her education at Georgetown University and the University of Oxford.While in graduate school, she founded the JR Biotek Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing high-quality biotechnology and laboratory training to students and early-career researchers across Africa—helping build scientific skills, confidence, and opportunity.
Today, through both her research and JR Biotek, Carol continues to empower hundreds of African scientists to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges in agriculture and sustainability.
Learn more > https://www.cam.ac.uk/this-cambridge-life/carol-nkechi-ibe
To learn more about Black History in Cambridge, visit https://www.cam.ac.uk/topics/Black-history