Did Gates even graduate from COLLEGE???
He graduated summa cum laude in history in 1973 and went off to Clare College, Cambridge University, on a Mellon Fellowship. At Cambridge, he met the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, who steered him toward the study of African-American literature. Six years later, when he received his Ph.D. in English from Cambridge -- his dissertation was on the critical reception of black literature during the Enlightenment -- Yale made him an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the English department and the Afro-American studies program.