Queen Latifah arrives at the MTV Video Music Awards. File photo/AP

Music artist and actress Queen Latifah is among the honorees being recognised by Harvard University this year for their contribution to black history and culture.

Harvard is set to award the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal to Queen Latifah and six other recipients on Oct. 22, according to the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school's Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research.

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Other honorees include poet and educator Elizabeth Alexander, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch III, poet Rita Dove, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television Sheila Johnson, artist Kerry James Marshall and Robert Smith, founder, chairman and chief executive of Vista Equity Partners.

The award is named after Du Bois, a scholar, writer, editor, and civil rights pioneer who became the first black student to earn a doctorate from Harvard in 1895.

Associated Press