Professorship Honors Musician Quincy Jones

Time Warner will cosponsor with Harvard a three-year visiting assistant professorship in Afro-American studies and music that will honor the legendary producer, arranger, and composer Quincy Jones, according to Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies.

The Quincy Jones Visiting Professor of African-American Music will be a joint appointment between the Department of Afro-American Studies and the Department of Music. Each appointment will last for one academic year, with a total of three appointments expected to be made. The first appointment is expected to begin with the 1996-97 academic year.

"Music is one of the pillars of African-American studies," said Gates. "As important as literature or history are to the field, music demands the attention of any serious student of African-American studies."

"At the same time that we are especially pleased to be offering this professorship with the Department of Music at Harvard, we are especially pleased to be able to honor one of the giants -- if not the giant -- in African-American popular music," Gates said. "Without question, Quincy Jones stands alone in any survey of black popular music over the last quarter-century."

"We are also extraordinarily grateful to Gerry Levin and Richard Parsons of Time Warner for their generosity, without which this appointment would not be possible," said Gates. "Their personal dedication to the widest possible dissemination and study of black music, in all its forms, was the difference that allowed this opportunity to occur."

Time Warner chairman and CEO Gerald M. Levin said, "Quincy Jones's music is both unique and unifying. It began in the hearts of people intent on full equality and has given meaning and inspiration to their journey. We at Time Warner wanted to celebrate the first half-century of Quincy's career in a way that not only pays tribute to the importance of his achievements, but also honors his personal commitment to young people and education by joining with Harvard University to fund the Quincy Jones Professorship of African-American Music."

The Department of Afro-American Studies is one of the nation's leading undergraduate departments in the field of African-American studies. In addition to Gates, who, along with other senior faculty members holds a joint appointment (English and American literature and language), the department's senior faculty includes Professor K. Anthony Appiah (philosophy), Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Divinity School), John Kain (economics), Werner Sollors (English and American literature and language), Cornel West (Divinity School), and William Julius Wilson (Kennedy School of Government).

For the past three years, the Department of Afro-American Studies has appointed the noted jazz and opera composer Anthony Davis as a Visiting Professor in Afro-American Studies.

The Department of Music is chaired by Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay. In addition to offering undergraduate instruction, the Department of Music offers the Ph.D. in music. Its senior faculty include Reinhold Brinkmann, Mario Davidovsky, Thomas F. Kelly, Robert D. Levin, David Lewin, Lewis Lockwood, Bernard Rands, and Christoph Wolff.