(Black PR Wire) On October 1st, Kimberlé Crenshaw, the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and the Promise Institute Professor at UCLA Law School received the prestigious W.E.B. Du Bois Medal from the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. The award recognizes individuals for their groundbreaking contributions to African American history, studies and culture.

In introducing Professor Crenshaw, Professor Guy-Uriel Charles from Harvard Law School celebrated her for her pivotal role in shaping critical race theory, intersectionality, and her relentless commitment to advocating for marginalized communities. “Few individuals, intellectuals, academics have changed how society thinks about an issue or a problem as Professor Kimberlé W. Crenshaw,” he stated during the award presentation, praising her work to fight systemic racism and sexism despite efforts to silence her.

At the podium, Crenshaw recalled her activism in student protests at Harvard Law School in the early 1980s to diversify the curriculum and faculty, noting that “out of this student movement came critical race theory, a prism forged by Black and ethnic studies, gender studies, critical legal studies, and applied to race and gender power. That eventually begat intersectionality.” Crenshaw quipped, “so, from standing on the dean’s desk in 1982 to standing here today as a recipient of this medal, I can say I’ve truly come full circle.”

Critical race theory and intersectionality have become targets in what some have called, “the war against woke.” Professor Charles states, “I remember hearing the controversy about critical race theory and it really surprised me, quite frankly, as a legal academic, because understanding and teaching that critical race theory is simply explaining the way that law interacts with race, to subjugate and meditate and think through equality…what is it about this that is so controversial?”

In her acceptance speech, Professor Crenshaw urged the audience to stand up to institutional attacks on knowledge and education:

“We have to fight against the censoring of our students as much as we fight the censoring of our books," Crenshaw told the audience of over three hundred academics, alumni and students in Sanders Theatre. “We have to fight against the selective use of ‘comfort’ to suppress uncomfortable conversations, whether it is about death and destruction in Tulsa 100 years ago, or about death and destruction in the Middle East today. We have to fight against the forced occupation of our minds as much as we fight over the control of our bodies. And when we commemorate our towering figures, our noteworthy victories, our enduring stories, it is the lessons, the concepts, the ideas that are bequeathed to us—the hard fought literacy to define and name our reality in order to transform it that we should value.”

The award ceremony included introductions from Hutchins Center Director, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the founder of the Hutchins Family Foundation, Glenn Hutchins. Crenshaw was one of eight recipients presented awards this year alongside Emmy-award winning actor LeVar Burton, among others in film, sports, theater, philanthropy and politics. As the co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, Professor Crenshaw has led grassroots movements such as #SayHerName and the Freedom to Learn coalition, and has argued that the fight to preserve our democracy and fight to preserve the nation’s commitments to antiracism are inextricably linked.