Harvard Awards Kimberlé Crenshaw With W.E.B. Du Bois Medal For Her Contributions To African And African American Culture

Civil rights advocate and legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw speaks after she received her medal during the Harvard University Hutchins Center Honors W.E.B. Du Bois Medal Ceremony on October 1, 2024, at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Masachusetts. | Source: Icon Sportswire / Getty

Congratulations are in order for the esteemed Kimberlé Crenshaw.

This week, the world-famous scholar and social justice advocate received the prestigious W.E.B. Du Bois Medal , awarded by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research courtesy of her alma mater, Harvard University, according to a press release. The honor is bestowed upon leaders who have made remarkable contributions to African and African American culture—an area to which Crenshaw has devoted her life’s work.

As the Co-founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum (AAPF), as well as a law professor at both Columbia University and UCLA, Crenshaw is a leading authority in critical race theory . She is best known for coining the term “intersectionality,” which explores how various aspects of identity—such as race, class, and gender—interact and overlap. Over the past five years, “intersectionality” has gained widespread attention, provoking both interest and backlash, particularly from right-wing critics.

Crenshaw’s extensive research in Black studies, writing, and activism has shed light on critical issues related to systemic inequality, such as the “school-to-prison pipeline” impacting African American children and the criminalization of behaviors among Black teenage girls. Through her incredible work with AAPF, Crenshaw collaborated with Andrea Ritchie to co-author Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women , a pivotal work that highlighted the killings of Black women and girls at the hands of law enforcement. Building on this foundation, Crenshaw and AAPF initiated the #SayHerName campaign to raise awareness of police violence against Black women and girls.

Crenshaw thanked her family during her W.E.B. Du Bois Medal speech.

In her acceptance speech on Tuesday, Crenshaw expressed gratitude to her family for nurturing her passion for social change and community activism. She highlighted how her lifelong dedication to Black studies originated in her childhood, where she was inspired by figures like Thurgood Marshall and the six Black congressmen of the Reconstruction Era, alongside icons such as Martin Luther King Jr. Her parents, who were also educators, believed that Black people “carried the promises of reconstruction.”

Crenshaw continued, “From my mother, this was literal, no one graduated from her classroom without memorizing all three verses of the Black National Anthem. So, my belief that law could provide that special incantation, opening the doors to opportunity for the we, came naturally to someone like me, as did the need to study our condition in order to transform it.”

The Harvard Law alum added, “Black studies, as I understood it, was grounded in a fundamental principle that the yawning inequalities facing the we, reflected deficits in the institutions and the practices that create inequality, not in us. We embrace the idea of the promissory note that King had demanded, and that was still held at bay a century later.”

On Monday, Crenshaw was honored alongside seven other distinguished recipients, including filmmaker Spike Lee, rapper Ice-T, Emmy-winning actor LeVar Burton, former Harvard women’s basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith, Studio Museum Director Thelma Golden, entrepreneur and philanthropist Strive Masiyiwa, and Colombia’s Vice President Francia Márquez Mina.

Congrats to Kimberlé Crenshaw on her W.E.B. Du Bois Medal! Watch the full ceremony below.

SEE ALSO:

Kimberlé W. Crenshaw Breaks Down The True Essence Of Critical Race Theory

The African American Policy Forum’s 5th Annual CRT Summer School Series Was A Call To Action For Social Justice

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