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Scholarship and Blackness.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an African-American historian. He attended Yale University in the late '60s. The New York Times describes Gates as "a 41-year-old academic entrepreneur who has been one of the most sought-after scholars in the country in the last decade." Gates has taught at Yale, Cornell and Duke. Now he's been recruited to revitalize Harvard's African-American studies department, serving as its new chairman. He's written for Newsweek, Time, and The Nation. He recently interviewed Spike Lee on his controversial film about Malcolm X for the New York Times, and has also written a book called "Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars," about multiculturalism. (Oxford University Press).

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Other segments from the episode on June 8, 1992

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, June 8, 1992: Interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; Interview with David McCallum; Review of Clancy Sigal's novel "The Secret Defector."
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16:57

Actor David Mcallum.

Actor David McCallum. He's still known for the TV role he had back in the 60s, as secret agent Illya Kuryakin in "The Man From UNCLE." Since then, he's had dozens of stage, TV, and movie roles. Currently, he has a supporting role as a police detective in the new English movie "Hear My Song." (REBROADCAST. ORIGINALLY AIRED 2/13/92)

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on the Social and Artistic Lives of Black Americans

Gates is the W.E.B. DuBois Professor of Humanities and chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University as well as a staff writer for "The New Yorker." In his new book, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man," Gates records the thoughts of some of society's most revered black American men. The men debate the current state of black men and the difficulties of race and gender relations in American society.

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Scholar and Activist Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Scholar and activist Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He's Professor of English and Chairman of Afro-American Studies at Harvard and one of Afro-American studies most visible and controversial proponents. Gates believes that Black studies should be a methodology, not an ideology, and that you don't have to be black to teach African-American literature.

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