Honorary Fellows receive Honorary Degrees

Two of Clare’s Honorary Fellows, Professor Anthony Appiah (1972) and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr (1973), received honorary degrees from the University of Cambridge on 22 June 2022. The conferment of honorary degrees is one of the highest accolades the University can bestow upon those who have made outstanding achievements in their respective fields.

Professor Anthony Appiah completed his undergraduate degree and PhD in Philosophy at Clare. A professor of both Philosophy and Law at New York University, Professor Appiah has taught philosophy, African studies and African American studies at the University of Ghana, as well as at Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard Universities. He is also the current Leslie Stephen Lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr came to Clare as a Mellon Fellow from Yale in 1973 and stayed on to complete a PhD in English. Currently the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard, Professor Gates is known for pioneering theories of African and African American literature and has created more than 20 films, including a ground-breaking genealogy and genetics series, Finding Your Roots.
Ahead of a special dinner for the honorary degree recipients, Emeritus Master Professor Tony Badger gave a talk on his new book, Why White Liberals Fail, which explores race and Southern US politics from FDR to Trump.

The day after the honorary degree ceremony, there was a panel event hosted by the University, featuring Professors Appiah and Gates alongside Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka(Honorary Fellow of Churchill College), to discuss five decades of friendship and societal change. The discussant for the event was Gillian Tett (Clare 1986). A video of the event and a written recap can be viewed on the University website:

www.cam.ac.uk/stories/50-years-and-counting-panel.

The three panellists also visited the Forbes Mellon Library, to view a display of their books, kindly donated to the Library by Professor Gates. The three distinguished writers have been friends since meeting in Cambridge 50 years ago.

Professor Gates has also recently commissioned PhD student and Mellon Fellow Griffin Black (2018) to carry out research into the first Black students to attend Clare College. The results of the research, with an autobiographical foreword by from Professor Gates, can be found on our website:

stories.clare.cam.ac.uk/black-at-clare/index.html.