Sean Combs, who left Howard University in 1990 after only two years to pursue his dreams of music stardom, is scheduled to deliver the school’s commencement address this spring, interim Howard President Wayne Frederick announced Tuesday in a statement. Critics and supporters took to social media to decry and praise the decision. Opponents said the…

Saturday Night Live alumna Maya Rudolph is slated to return to NBC in May with an hour-long variety show special, featuring musical guest Janelle Monae, according to Shadow and Act. The Maya Rudolph Show will air at 10 p.m. on May 19 and will be an update of the classic variety show, offering music and…

The family of a 24-year-old woman killed  by a bullet from an off-duty Detroit police officer’s gun while the two were were dancing wants the case reopened after prosecutors declined to press charges, the Huffington Post reports. Adaisha Miller attended a fish fry hosted by Officer Issac Parrish at his home in the city on…

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University professor and director of the newly launched Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, on Tuesday announced the class of 23 students for the 2014-15 academic year. “We are delighted to welcome one of our most distinguished and diverse class of fellows of the…

Retired major league baseball player Doug Glanville was hit with a sobering reminder of racial profiling in America one day in February as he stood in the driveway of his Tudor home in Hartford, Conn., shoveling snow, he writes in a poignant piece at The Atlantic. See, his neighbor, an empty-nester in his late 60s…

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has condemned the beating of motorist Steve Utash, which happened in Detroit this month when the man stopped his pickup truck to check on a child who had run into traffic and been hit by the truck, according to the Detroit News. Jackson told the News that those involved in the…

A man has sued the New York City Police Department over an incident captured on video in which an officer allegedly pepper-sprayed him several times, the Daily News reports. Stefon Luckey, 34, an emergency medical technician, alleges in the suit filed in federal court in Brooklyn that he was assaulted at a deli last May in the…

Dozens of young black and Hispanic men from Central High School in Champaign, Ill., got their “swagger on” in a music video designed to combat negative stereotypes about minority men, who are frequently portrayed in the media as violent and sloppily dressed. The honor roll students, poets, future collegiate athletes and National Honor Society members…

Indiana University freshman Julian Batts appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday to discuss an unfortunate string of answers on Wheel of Fortune that cost him a chance to win $1 million, a car and a trip to Jamaica. Although Batts eventually won the game on the show that aired Friday, collecting $11,700, his…

A second autopsy of 30-year-old Kalamazoo doctor Teleka Patrick confirmed the previous autopsy’s conclusion that she had died of asphyxia from drowning, a private investigator hired by Patrick’s family told the news website MLive. Jim Carlin, the investigator, told the news site that he attended the second autopsy, which was conducted Friday at the Marion…