Dr. Entrepreneur

Dr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr.

Laughter breaks into his
conversation as freely as heat rises in a chilly room. Yet when Dr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr.  is serious, his tone of voice, expressions, and gestures punctuate
a surge of speech that quickens and retards to embellish his carefully
chosen words.
He was born and reared in Piedmont, W.Va., and earned his undergraduate degree at Yale, and graduate credentials at the University of Cambridge in England before embarking on a career as an English professor. Over the past 20 years he has published more essays, books, and articles — and amassed more academic prizes and honors — than most scholars his age have strands of hair.
His critics accuse him of being too elitist, overextended, and too flamboyant. Meanwhile, fans fawn over to his prolific scholarship, his ingenuity, and his compassionate demeanor.  
Whether one loves or hates him, the fact is that in less than a decade, this erudite 48-year-old has transformed Harvard's once ailing Afro-American studies department into the envy of scholars in all sorts of disciplines. As a screenwriter of three films, a contributing editor at the New Yorker, and a founding partner of Afropedia, Inc. — which owns the editorial content of the new Encarta Africana — Gates also is giving new meaning to the monikers "public intellectual" and "scholarly entrepreneur."
The following is excerpted from a conversation Black Issues editors had with Gates on the status of Black studies — at Harvard and throughout the academy — the changing image of African American intellectuals, and managing a high-speed intellectual career at the threshold of the 21st century.

You've said you wanted to do the Encarta Africana to fulfill the vision of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. What lessons have you learned in fulfilling that vision?
A lot of people ask us, "What are you doing for the Black man and the Black community?" People don't understand that there are many ways to serve.... [Dr.] Anthony [Appiah] and I have spent three years killing ourselves to do this encyclopedia, from the time we first got the green light to do a demo to right now. That's a lot of time when we couldn't be in YMCAs, or be in Big Brothers programs, or something like that. But this [Encarta Africana] will reach millions of Black kids — millions, literally.