Henry Louis Gates John Jay Founders Lecture: Scholar, author, filmmaker, journalist, cultural critic, mentor and institution builder, Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He has authored or co-authored twenty-four books, created twenty documentary films, and received fifty-five honorary degrees. He was a member of the first class of Fellows of the MacArthur Foundation, and the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

His most recent projects are the PBS documentary Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, released in April, and the related book Stony The Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. For tickets or to donate to The Friends of John Jay Homestead.