Ruth J. Simmons is a trailblazer.
The first black president of an Ivy League institution recently dusted off her regalia, coming out of retirement at 72 to take the top job — first temporarily, now permanently — at Prairie View A&M University, a historically black college near Houston. The hire was a landmark moment for the institution, and an unexpected move for Ms. Simmons.
But the arc of her life and career makes the position seem perfect. Originally from Houston, the youngest of 12 children of sharecroppers, she went to Dillard University, in New Orleans. “I know how important historically black colleges and universities are for kids like I was,” she has said. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Romance literature at Harvard University, and she taught French before serving in administrative roles at several institutions, including as provost at Spelman College, vice provost at Princeton University, president of Smith College, and president of Brown University.
Ms. Simmons spoke with The Chronicle about how she dealt with an affront at Princeton, why she almost turned down the presidency at Smith, and the frustrating meeting that made her want to stay at Prairie View.
•
How did you decide to go to Dillard?
I had not imagined going to college. I remember asking my mother once whether or not I could go, and she said something like, Yes, if the money could be found. She didn’t want to disappoint me by saying no, but I knew she didn’t believe it was possible.
A teacher of mine had attended Dillard, and she persuaded me that I should apply, and she appealed to them to offer me a scholarship. If she hadn’t done that, I doubt very seriously that I would have gone to college. It was really a teacher who made that possible. And her choice of Dillard was very straightforward: She didn’t believe it was safe for me to go to the newly desegregated universities in Texas.
Some say that recent enrollment gains at historically black colleges and universities may be due in part to students’ wanting to go where they feel safe, where they feel secure and nurtured. What is your sense of that?
I wouldn’t characterize it as safe and nurtured, actually. I think of it more as assessing realistically what the challenges might be in different institutions and choosing to attend one that offers specific things that they are looking for. I certainly am not trying to provide a “safe” environment for my students at Prairie View. I’m trying to goad them, I’m trying to push them. I’m trying to do a lot of things that wouldn’t be called “safe.”
Let’s take a step back, to when you became director of the black-studies program at Princeton. Can you walk me through that?
So here’s the thing: My field is French. And the administration at Princeton comes and asks me to serve as acting director of Afro-American studies. I was greatly offended. I confronted the administration and said, “How dare you ask me to serve as acting director of Afro-American studies when you know that I know nothing about Afro-American studies? It’s a clear indication to me that you don’t care about the quality of the program.”
It was because you were black?
Absolutely. I said I would not do it. But then they came back to me and asked if I would reconsider, and what would it take for me to direct the program. I thought about it and said, “Well, I don’t know enough, but if I do take it on, I’ll do it with absolute seriousness of purpose, and I will push for everything that I can to ensure that the program becomes a legitimate academic program at Princeton,” because I knew what that meant.
I went in to see the dean of the faculty, and I said, “I have eight standards before I can accept the appointment. I’m going to list them all for you and see if you’re prepared to support them. If you can’t support all of them, then I won’t do it.” And so I ran through the list, and he agreed to each one, and I shook his hand and walked out and then went to work for Afro-American studies.
Can people still do that?
One should always think deeply about what one is doing. If you think you can do something well, then you should require everything that would make it successful. Why should anyone want to do something where they can’t possibly succeed? That would be an odd situation to be in. Push as hard as you can. Any smart CEO or president will know that you get good programs only when you get people who are going to push hard to make them the best programs they can be.
Let’s fast-forward to when Smith approaches you for the presidency. What made you decide to accept?
Some of it was the help of a mentor of mine, Aaron Lemonick, who had been dean of the faculty at Princeton. I was very reticent about the Smith offer, and I had all but decided that I was not going to take it. He asked me to lunch, and over lunch, I gave him a series of reasons, and he told me how utterly ridiculous I was being.
What were some of your reasons?
That Princeton couldn’t do without me was my biggest one. It was a sense that I’d started things there that needed to be finished. I felt walking away wouldn’t be fair to Princeton. What Aaron Lemonick said to me was, “You must be crazy. Princeton has been here for over 200 years, and if you leave tomorrow, they will hardly notice that you’re gone.” He wasn’t gentle about it. He basically skewered every weak excuse I had.
I realized that like others with my background, I was worried about failure. I had the sense that, because of the visibility of the appointment, it would be very bad if I failed, because it would be a prima facie case that somebody like me could not make the move to an elite liberal-arts college as president.
I wanted to know whether Smith fully understood the risk. I wanted them to understand that I would not be able to change who I was. I wanted to know if they could live with someone who was independent-minded and attached overtly to her roots and culture. There was some opposition on the board, but they decided they were willing to have me as president.
So then Brown comes. What was that transition like?
Well, it was fundamentally the same thing. The Smith appointment had stunned me, the hoopla about it. The attention was relentless. And if Smith had been that way, what would becoming the first African-American president of an Ivy League university look like? If I failed, that would be 10 times worse.
You wrote a piece for The Chronicle last year about being a “first.” What do you carry with you from that?
If you’re representing any population group, any cultural group, any gender group, the thing about being a first is that you want to make it possible for people to come after you. A first never wants to disappoint the people who believed in that ideal, in the capacity to endorse difference.
You were also among the first to look at a university’s legacy with slavery. What was that like?
The best way to put it is like I did at Brown: Universities must tell the truth. Other institutions are not tied as closely to transparency and veracity, because it’s not their tradition, legacy, or expectation. To hold on to the trust of the public, and sometimes to even earn it or reclaim it, universities have to be associated with this kind of disclosure.
When they fail to do that, they become just another corrupt institution that should be challenged in every dimension of its enterprise. It does not simply pertain to slavery; it pertains to everything we do.
So you’re in retirement, and Prairie View comes and offers you the interim presidency. What makes you say yes?
Initially I thought, Yeah, not in this life. My first answer was, “Look, I’m too old, and I’m too tired.” But John Sharp, the chancellor of the Texas A&M system, picked me up and drove in a dark-tinted car through the campus. They didn’t want me to be seen, but they were trying to give me a sense of what the campus was like. I saw all of these students walking about. Students like the Brown students I loved so much. They were there to get an education. They were aspiring. No educators worth their salt can ever turn away from students. In the end, I just couldn’t say no.
And the decision to become the permanent president?
Part of the dilemma for me was if you get the reputation for being a change agent, whatever that means, then you’re supposed to change things. I was sitting in a meeting, going through a set of things that I wanted to do, and I was getting tremendous pushback on something I thought was so basic and so important for our students. And I realized that people were sitting there thinking that they just had to wait awhile, and I would be gone. If I really wanted to do anything, then I had to commit.
So I left that very meeting, walked to my desk, picked up my phone, texted the head of the system, and asked him about removing the “interim” from my name.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Adam Harris is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @AdamHSays or email him at adam.harris@chronicle.com.
