Angela Bassett and Didier Drogba Among 2026 W. E. B. Du Bois Medal Recipients

Harvard awarded eight individuals the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, the University’s highest honor in the field of African and African American studies, during a Thursday ceremony at Sanders Theatre.

This year’s recipients included Golden Globe Award-winning actress Angela Bassett, who played singer Tina Turner in the 1993 biopic, and soccer striker Didier Drogba, the first African soccer player to score 100 Premier League goals. Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, artist Theaster Gates, singer and civil rights activist Mavis Staples, film producer Lena Waithe, Google executive James Manyika, and civic leader Fletcher “Flash” Wiley were also honored with the award.

The Hutchins Center for African and African American Research has backed the award every year since 2000 to honor the legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent civil rights leader who graduated from Harvard in 1890. Past recipients have included Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, and Muhammad Ali.

Thursday’s ceremony drew more than 500 attendees, including Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Provost John F. Manning ’82. Wiley, who died in 2025, was represented by his wife, Bennie Wiley.

Hutchins Center Director Henry Louis Gates Jr., who co-hosted the ceremony with Glenn H. Hutchins ’77, opened the event by thanking Garber for upholding Harvard’s mission under federal pressure — an action he said aligned with values embodied in the award.

“It was not a fight anyone sought,” Gates Jr. said. “I am proud, President Garber, that when it came, Harvard held fast to its principles — the principles that it holds sacrosanct.”

“I am proud to be a professor at a university that does that,” he added.

Samantha J. Power, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, presented the medal to Drogba. She highlighted the Ivorian soccer player’s role in helping to end Ivory Coast’s first civil war.

After qualifying for the World Cup in 2005, Drogba — along with several of his teammates — used the victory to give a televised speech calling for the conflict’s end. The moment was credited with generating momentum for peace.

“My goal is not to create football players, but to help shape men and women of strong values, equipped with a solid education and excellent health,” he said in his acceptance speech on Thursday.

Bassett received the last medal of the day, presented by Diane Paulus ’88, artistic director of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater. Paulus praised Bassett for bringing “uncommon depth to portrayals of black women on stage and screen.”

“You have shown us not only what is possible, but what it means to rise to our fullest potential, and in doing so, to lift others along the way,” she said.

Bassett, who earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University, said it is “deeply humbling” to receive the award at Harvard.

“I’ve had the privilege of stepping into the lives of women whose courage, strength, resilience, brilliance, and humanity have challenged me and transformed me,” she said. “I hope, in some small way, have helped audiences to see us more fully.”