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Brown University made history Thursday when it named Ruth J. Simmons as its new president. Ms. Simmons, currently the head of Smith College, is not only the first woman chosen to lead Brown, but the first black president of an Ivy League institution.
The university’s board of trustees, the Corporation of Brown University, approved the unanimous recommendation of Ms. Simmons by a trustees’ selection committee and a campus advisory committee. Brown had been seeking a new president since E. Gordon Gee stunned the university last February by quitting after two years on the job to take the helm at Vanderbilt University.
Brown’s decision pleased many black scholars, including Cornel West, a professor of African-American studies at Harvard University. “This is a great day for higher education in America and for the culture,” he said. “She is one of the most courageous, visionary, and effective college presidents in America.”
Charles V. Willie, a professor emeritus at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, called the appointment “a breakthrough in higher education.” “Her example is clear and present evidence that there is wisdom and ability in sectors and population groups that have not been looked to for leadership in these institutions in the past,” he added.
Stephen Robert, the university’s chancellor and chairman of the trustees’ committee, said Brown had chosen Ms. Simmons for her “impressive accomplishments in areas of particular importance to Brown,” including institutional diversity, undergraduate scholarships, and collaborative research.
The youngest of 12 children of a Texas sharecropper, Ms. Simmons, 54, said the Brown presidency interested her in part because of the opportunity it provides to make a difference nationally in policy debates, such as on school reform and affirmative action. “I would like to be able to play a more direct role in influencing how universities address these and other issues, and the presidency of Brown will afford me that opportunity,” she wrote in a letter to the Smith campus on Thursday.
Her own higher education began at historically black Dillard University, in New Orleans. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in 1973 from Harvard in Romance languages and literatures. She taught at the University of New Orleans and California State University at Northridge before becoming an associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Southern California. She later was associate dean of the faculty at Princeton University, where she led its black-studies program and lured scholars including Toni Morrison and Mr. West.
After a two-year stint as provost of Spelman College, she returned to Princeton in 1992 as vice provost. She has led Smith College since 1995.
Mari Jo Buhle, a Brown professor who was chairwoman of the campus advisory committee for the presidential search, said Ms. Simmons’s strong academic background impressed people who had been dissatisfied on that count with Mr. Gee. “He has said himself that he was a poor match for Brown,” Ms. Buhle said. “She’s a much better match.”
Background articles from The Chronicle:
