"My dad does not sleep," Rashida says. "I don't know how he does it, he is so driven."
Transcending Race
Jones now owns five separate enterprises, but has faced criticism from some in the black community for his willingness to work with mostly-white companies.
Jones and Time Warner each own a 50 percent share of Qwest Records, and he and David Salzman have equal shares of Vibe records. None of his enterprises are majority black owned.
But supporters are quick to point out that the flip side of the coin is that his product is quintessentially black, and many say his greatest success is transmitting this culture to the larger world.
"I think he has been able to last so long because he can appeal to so many kinds of people," says Valerie Gray, the entertainment editor at Black Enterprise. "He has been able to transcend ethnic groups with his music."
But Jones' magazine, Vibe, which was created in 1992, has also been criticized for being an inauthentic representation of black culture. When senior writer Kevin Powell resigned from the magazine, he cited the large number of white members on the senior editorial board as his reason.
But Clinkscales, who himself is black, defends the politics of the magazine.
"I think some people get into this very serious thing of counting the number of bodies. We have an editorial staff which is more than 50 percent black, closer to 75 percent black," Clinkscales says. "We do have some white editors, I am very proud of them."
"He is a man who is enormously proud of his ethnic heritage," Gates says. "He is not a racist; only to perform with black people as a matter of principal would be racist."
Gates says he will attend Jones' speech today, and that he is looking forward to hearing from the man "who is truly loved by everyone."
Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, who will also attend the speech, says that Jones is a particularly appropriate choice of speaker because he, like the College, believes that cultures must interact to reaffirm and strengthen their own identities. Epps says the College's philosophy on race closely mirrors that of Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison.
Jones has listed Ellison as one of his favorite writers, and the message that Harvard's newest graduates will hear today comes from a man who made a career of sharing the culture that created him with the world that long ignored it.
"The whole world has decided to throw away their own culture and use this as the culture that reflects them. Music by African-Americans has become their voice, their Esperanto, so to speak," Jones told Billboard. "I've traveled around this world so many times, and it still shocks me. And Americans, white and black, seem to be the last to know about it."
To hear a sampling of Quincy Jones' work, please see The Harvard Crimson web page at: http://hcs.harvard.edu/~crimson.