"Finding Your Roots" on PBS

[tishaLA]

28. I just want to saythis little bit about Skip

Ive known him since my second year, I think, of graduate school. He was a d friend of my mentor, the estimable Valerie Smith (the finest professor I have ever known), then a professor at UCLA, soon to be the director of the African American Studies Program at Princeton )where most of her students followed her), and eventually to Dean of Princeton, and, finally, to the President of Swarthmore College, one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the nation (and founded by the anti-abolitionist Quakers). Ms Smith is an amazing black woman whose teaching is only superseded by her attentiveness to her students.

With Prof Smith, I had the opportunity severeal times to have dinner with Prof Gates, who was utterly charming. He was one of the few superstars in academia who was genuinely interested in my work as a graduate student; one of the few who offered advice and direction; and one of the few whose letters and phone calls on my behalf resulted in my movement from plebeian graduate student to faculty member.

He's really a great man whose actions in front of the camera are exceeded by those behind it. Unlike other black academic superstars (like, for example, Prof West, who mostly engaged in sexual harassment and nasty emails to grad assistants), Gates was always there, willing to exchange ideas, to offer other modes of inquiry, and to offer telling but honest critique of the ideas I was pursuing.

So while my kudos go primarily to Val Smith, I owe a great deal to Prof Gates, too, who helped me hone my arguments and assist me in becoming yhe scholar I one day hope to be. He's a kind, generous man