The CEO of Time Warner, Inc. announced Friday that the company will endow a Harvard professorship dedicated to the study of black music.

This will be the first time a corporation has funded a permanent professorship in Afro-American studies at any American university.

The seat will officially be called the Quincy Jones Professorship of African-American Music, Supported by the Time Warner Endowment. Gates said the endowment will fund a joint professorship in the Afro-American studies and music departments.

"I don't deserve it," the 67-year-old winner of 26 Grammy awards said at the press conference.

Jones's long list of accomplishments as a musician, composer and executive, ranges from playing the trumpet and arranging music for jazz greats Lionel Hampton and Count Basie, to producing the NBC show "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

The announcement and tribute to Jones was part of the celebration of the Afro-American Studies Department's 30th anniversary, held at the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel in Boston.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of the department and DuBois professor of the humanities, said he was very excited by Time Warner's decision, which he said was unexpected.

According to Gates, Time Warner CEO Gerald M. Levin agreed four years ago to sponsor a visiting professor in Afro-American studies. At last June's commencement, Levin notified Gates that he wanted to make the funding permanent as an endowed professorship.