Subscribe
Cassius Life Featured Video
CLOSE
BET Presents the American Black Film Festival Honors - Arrivals

Source: Frazer Harrison / Getty

Rapper and actor Queens Latifah can now add a new accomplishment to an already long list; Harvard University honoree.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, on October 22, Latifah will be honored by Harvard University with the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal for her contributions to Black history and culture.

The six others who will also be receiving the medal include BET‘s co-founder Sheila Johnson, CEO of Vista Equity Partners Robert Smith, poets Rita Dove poet and Elizabeth Alexander, artist Kerry James Marshall and more. The medal is named after William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—who was, of course, the first Black student to earn a doctorate from Harvard back in 1895. Du Bois went on to become a scholar, writer, editor, and civil rights activist who is still revered by many today.

Harvard has been getting it right lately when it comes to honoring pioneers in Hip-Hop culture, with Nas getting the same medal back in 2013. The Queens-born rapper would simultaneously get the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship established at the Ivy League school.

Latifah is a New Jersey native and because she always shows love to her roots, Harvard isn’t the first university to honor her accomplishments. Just last year the actress was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Rutgers University.

“This place has shaped me,” she said during her acceptance speech. “Whether it’s been your home for four years or 40 years or something in between, you carry it with you. Just as I have. Long before Living Single and Set It Off and Chicago, it’s lessons I learned right here at home that made me the person I am.”

Happy Birthday, H.E.R.! Her 15 Flyest Looks in Photo
15 photos