Henry Louis Gates Jr. awarded Vilcek Prize for Excellence

The Vilcek Foundation announced the 2025 recipient of the Vilcek Prize for Excellence in Literary Scholarship on Feb. 3. Alphonse Fletcher University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was named as this year’s honoree.

The award, which recognizes leaders with a profound impact on society and contributions to the fields of arts, sciences, and humanities, comes with a $100,000 cash prize. Gates was praised for his contributions as a scholar of African American history, as well as leading conversations on race, literature, and immigration.  

“What makes Henry Louis Gates so special is his commitment to making complex histories accessible,” Vilcek Foundation President Rick Kinsel said in a statement. “Through his multidisciplinary approach — ranging from documentaries to television programs, public speaking engagements, and literature — he has brought historical context and perspective on some of society’s most pressing issues to the American public at home.”

Gates, who also serves as the director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard, is a prolific writer and editor, literary scholar, historian, and filmmaker. An Emmy, DuPont, and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, Gates has produced and hosted several documentary films, including “The Black Church,” “Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches,” and “Great Migrations.” He has been the host and executive producer of the PBS series, “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr.” since 2012.

“Dr. Henry Louis Gates’s scholarship and criticism connects the past to the present, illuminating how the darkest parts of U.S. history have shaped the cultural and political divides in our country today,” the organization’s co-founder Jan Vilcek said. “In celebrating Dr. Gates with this award, the Vilcek Foundation acknowledges and shows support for his career and legacy as a literary historian and cultural authority.”

“I am deeply humbled that my work has been honored in this extraordinary way,” Gates said after the award was announced.

The honoree was part of a larger cohort of winners for this year’s Vilcek Foundation Prizes. The foundation awarded 14 prizes totaling $950,000 in biomedical science, visual arts, and curatorial work. The Vilcek Prize for Excellence and the Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History, also included in the awards, are given to U.S.-born individuals with “profound impact on culture through their intellectual and institutional leadership.” The 2025 cohort includes recipients from the U.S., El Salvador, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Haiti, Spain, Hungary, the U.K., Iran, China, and Israel.

Established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, themselves immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia, the Vilcek Foundation aims to raise awareness of the contributions immigrants make in the United States. The foundation has awarded more than $15 million in prizes and grants in the arts, sciences, and humanities.