"We are honoring Professor Gates for his scholarly contributions to African-American Studies and his distinguished efforts on behalf of multiethnic and multicultural understanding," said Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, President of Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion.

Dr. Gates received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. His books include: The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, for which he received an American Book Award; Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the Racial Self; Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars; Colored People: A Memoir, which was awarded the Lillian Smith Prize for Southern Literature and the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Award for nonfiction; and the recently published Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man. Known for his work in recovering black writers from obscurity, Gates is the series editor of the 40-volume Schomburg Library of 19th Century Black Women Writers, as well as the Amistad literary series entitled Critical Perspectives Past and Present, and co-editor of Transition Magazine. He has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, as well as numerous prizes, including a Polk Award for Social Commentary.

The Joseph Prize has been awarded on an annual basis since 1978. It provides a $10,000 cash award to be used for further humanitarian efforts. The first award went to Victor Kugler, who gave refuge to Anne Frank and her family in The Netherlands. Other honorees have included Rosa Parks; the people of Le Chambon, a Huguenot village in France, who rescued thousands of Jews during the Holocaust; Helen Suzman, an anti- apartheid activist; and Montana Association of Churches and the First Congregational Church of Billings, Montana for public activism in combating local anti-Semitic hate crimes.