February is Black History Month, and Cambridge in America stands with the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.
We celebrate CAm Board Director Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Clare College 1973), an American literary scholar and Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Professor Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, including from the University of Cambridge.
In 2024 he received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a documentary television series that uses genealogical research and genetics to discover the family history of well-known Americans, and he is the 2024 recipient of the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his contributions to the literary world and commitment to Black history. He is also the host of Great Migrations: A People on the Move , a new docuseries that explores the transformative impact of Black migration on American culture and society. Read more.
We celebrate Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah (Clare College 1972), an English-American philosopher and writer who has written about political philosophy, ethics, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he joined the faculty in 2014. He was previously the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. Appiah was elected President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in January 2022.
Appiah has been nominated for, or received, several honors. In 2012, Appiah was awarded the National Humanities Medal at a ceremony at the White House. In 2024, Appiah was awarded the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, a $500,000 prize awarded by the Library of Congress recognizing work in disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prizes. Read more.
We celebrate Professor Danielle Allen (King's College 1993), an American classicist and political scientist. She is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, Harvard's highest faculty honor, where she is also the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard in 2015, Allen was UPS Foundation Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Allen graduated from Princeton University in 1993 with an A.B. in Classics. She earned summa cum laude honors and an induction into Phi Beta Kappa. Allen completed a 178-page senior thesis, titled "The State of Judgment", under the supervision of Professor Andre Laks. As a Marshall Scholar, she studied at King's College, Cambridge University, where she received an M.Phil. in classics in 1994 and a Ph.D. in classics in 1996. Allen then pursued further graduate studies at Harvard University, earning an M.A. in government in 1998 and a Ph.D. in government in 2001. Read more.
We celebrate Erin Amico (Queens' College 2009), President & CEO of The Chicago Academy of Sciences and its Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (“Nature Museum”). Before joining the Nature Museum, Ms. Amico served as the CMO at P33, a nonprofit driving inclusive growth for Chicago’s tech sector. In that role, she was responsible for reaching over 1 million tech professionals nationwide through transformational digital efforts and exploring pathways to STEM education for Chicagoland.
Ms. Amico is a recognized leader in Chicago and currently serves on several boards and advisory committees. Her current board engagements include the Midwest Board of UNICEF and the French American Chamber of Commerce Foundation. Ms. Amico serves as a mentor to mHUB’s Climate and Energy Tech teams and is a Management Leadership for Tomorrow Fellow. In 2022, Ms. Amico was named Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40. Read more.
To learn more about Black History in Cambridge, visit https://www.cam.ac.uk/topics/Black-history