Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Dahlia Lithwick Join the New York Times Op-Ed Page as Guest Columnists.

NEW YORK -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., author and commentator, and Dahlia Lithwick, columnist and senior editor at Slate, will write columns for The New York Times Op-Ed page as guest columnists during the month of August and the first week of September. Dr. Gates's column will appear from August 1 through August 5 and September 2 through September 5. Ms. Lithwick's column will appear August 8 through August 29. Their columns will appear on Thursdays and Sundays in place of Thomas L. Friedman's column while he is on sabbatical to finish a book about geopolitics. Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page, made the announcement today.

"This summer has been an opportunity for us to bring some wonderful writers to fill in for Tom Friedman during his book leave," Ms. Collins said. "Barbara Ehrenreich's columns in July have been just amazing, and our readers are in for another great month in August with Skip Gates and Dahlia Lithwick. Skip is one of the nation's pre-eminent thinkers and writers, and Dahlia has one of the most distinctive new voices in American journalism."

Dr. Gates, 53, is the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is one of the leading United States cultural critics, whose books, articles and literary commentary are widely published. He is the author of "Figures in Black: Words, Signs and the 'Racial' Self" (Oxford University Press, 1987) and "The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism" (Oxford, 1988), which won the 1989 American Book Award. He also wrote "Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars" (Oxford, 1992); "Colored People: A Memoir" (Knopf, 1994), which traces his childhood experiences in a small West Virginia town in the 1950's and 1960's; "The Future of the Race" (Knopf, 1996), co-authored with Cornel West; "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man" (Random House, 1997); "Wonders of the African World" (Knopf, 2001); "The Trials of Phillis Wheatley" (Basic/Civitas, 2003); and "America Behind the Color Line" (Warner, 2004). He has also published numerous articles for The New Yorker.

Dr. Gates was the co-general editor of "The Norton Anthology of African American Literature" (W.W. Norton, 1996), co-editor of "The Africana Encyclopedia" (Civitas, 1999), and editor of several works, including "The Bondwoman's Narrative" (Warner, 2002). He also co-edited "African American Lives" (Oxford, 2004).

Dr. Gates wrote, hosted and narrated two co-produced documentaries for PBS and BBC: "Wonders of the African World" (1999) and "America Beyond the Color Line" (2004).

Dr. Gates has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" (1981), the George Polk Award for Social Commentary (1993), a Chicago Tribune Heartland Award (1994), the Golden Plate Achievement Award (1995) and a National Humanities Medal (1998). Dr. Gates was included in Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" list (1997) and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. Dr. Gates received a B.A. degree summa cum laude in History from Yale University in 1973. He earned an M.A. degree and Ph.D in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge in 1979.

Ms. Lithwick, 37, a senior editor and legal correspondent for Slate, writes the column "Supreme Court Dispatches" and has covered the Microsoft trial and other legal issues. Before joining Slate, she worked for a family law firm in Reno, Nev. and clerked for Procter Hug, chief justice of the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996. Her work has appeared in the New Republic, Commentary, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Elle and on CNN.com. She is a weekly legal commentator for the NPR show, Day to Day. She is co-author of "Me v. Everybody: Absurd Contracts for an Absurd World" (Workman Publishing, 2003), a legal humor book, and "I Will Sing Life: Voices from the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp" (Little, Brown & Co., 1992), a book about seven children from Paul Newman's camp who have life-threatening illnesses.

Ms. Lithwick was awarded the Online News Association's award for online commentary in 2001. She received a B.A degree in English from Yale University in 1990 and a J.D degree from Stanford Law School in 1996.

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