Early life and education

Simmons was born in Grapeland, Texas, the last of 12 children of Fanny (née Campbell) and Isaac Stubblefield. Her father was a sharecropper, until the family moved to Houston during her school years. Her paternal grandfather descends partly from Benza and Kota people slaves from Gabon. She earned her bachelor's degree, on scholarship, from Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1967. She went on to earn her master's and doctorate in Romance literature from Harvard University in 1970 and 1973, respectively.

Academic positions

Simmons's first positions in academic administration were at the University of Southern California, starting in 1979 as assistant dean of graduate studies, and then as associate dean of graduate studies. She was a professor of Romance languages and became a dean at Princeton University from 1983 to 1990. She served as provost at Spelman College from 1990 to 1992.

Smith College presidency

In 1995 Simmons became the first African-American woman to head a major college or university when she was selected as president of Smith College, which she led until 2001. As president of Smith College, Simmons started the engineering program.

Brown University presidency

Ruth Simmons became president of Brown in 2001. At Brown, she completed an ambitious $1.4 billion initiative - the largest in Brown's history - known as Boldly Brown: The Campaign for Academic Enrichment in order to enhance Brown’s academic programs. In 2005, President Simmons earned enough confidence in her leadership of Brown to motivate philanthropist and former Brown student Sidney E. Frank to make the largest aggregate monetary contribution to Brown in its entire history in the amount of $120 million. The Frank gift was principally devoted to scholarship assistance to Brown students and to Brown's programs in the sciences. By early 2007, President Simmons had earned the confidence of philanthropist Warren Alpert who made a similarly generous contribution to strengthen the programs of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in the amount of $100 million, matching the core portion of the Sidney Frank gift to Brown. As reported in a May 22, 2009, press release, Brown chancellor Thomas J. Tisch announced early accomplishment of the $1.4 billion fundraising campaign and the continued pursuit of specific subsidiary goals in support of endowments for student scholarships, the Brown faculty and internationalization programs through the originally planned campaign completion date of December 31, 2010.

In a 2006 orientation meeting with parents, Simmons denied interest in the presidency of Harvard University, which at the time was headed by an interim president, Derek Bok. Nevertheless, a 2007 New York Times article, featuring a photograph of Simmons, reported that the Harvard Corporation, responsible for selecting the university's replacement for former president Lawrence Summers, had been given a list of "potential candidates" that included her name.

In August 2007, President Simmons was invited to deliver the 60th Annual Reading of the historic 1790 George Washington Letter to Touro Synagogue at the Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island in response to Moses Seixas on the subject of religious pluralism.

In September 2011, Simmons announced that she would step down from her position as Brown President at the end of the 2011-12 academic year, remaining at Brown as a professor of comparative literature and Africana studies.

Goldman Sachs

Ruth Simmons' salary of over $300,000 at Goldman Sachs during the time of the late-2000s financial crisis was cited in Inside Job (2010), which won the Academy Award, as an example of conflicts of interest between institutions of higher learning impartiality in economics departments due to her position of President of Brown University.

Transnational initiatives at Brown

President Simmons has made internationalization a strategic priority for Brown to better prepare its students for the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly interconnected world. She currently leads an international agenda that seeks to ensure that Brown students are well prepared for lives and careers that will increasingly have an international dimension; to enable the University effectively to compete for the best students and faculty available for transnational scholarly collaborations; to enhance Brown’s position in addressing global problems; to provide transnational professional development opportunities to young leaders educated at Brown; and to undertake strong dialog with peer institutions in other countries.

As the wealth that the founding Brown family contributed to the university was based in part on the triangular slave trade, in 2003 Simmons established the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice to examine this complex history and make recommendations for how the university might approach the relevant issues. The Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice was subsequently published. On February 16, 2007 at an event celebrating the 200-year anniversary of the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 and the involvement of Cambridge University alumni William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and William Pitt the Younger, Simmons delivered a lecture at St. John's College, Cambridge entitled Hidden in Plain Sight: Slavery and Justice in Rhode Island. Also in February 2007, Brown University published its official Response to the Report of the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice following completion of the historic inquiry undertaken by the committee appointed by President Simmons. The bicentenary of the British abolition of the slave trade was also commemorated at Oxford University, notably at Rhodes House.

In October 2007, Simmons appointed David W. Kennedy, the former Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School as vice president for international affairs. In addition to supporting the leadership of the Watson Institute for International Studies, the new university officer will lead a multidisciplinary advanced research project in the field of global law, governance and social thought to strengthen the University’s international work in the social sciences.

As an additional element of President Simmons’ leadership of Brown’s international efforts, Brown and Banco Santander of Spain inaugurated an annual series of International Advanced Research Institutes to convene a rising generation of scholars from emerging and developing countries at Brown in a signing ceremony on November 13, 2008, at the John Hay Library between Brown provost David Kertzer and Emilio Botin, chairman of Banco Santander. As noted by President Simmons: "To be at the forefront of research today means being in conversation with global peers. The Brown Institutes provide exciting opportunities to encounter new ideas, build collegial relationships and enrich faculty development for young scholars and teachers from around the world."

In March 2010, President Simmons traveled to India as part of a major program called the Year of India which is dedicated to the improvement of understanding of Indian history, politics, education and culture among Brown students and faculty.

President Simmons has been invited to participate in meetings of global leaders organized by the Clinton Global Initiative and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Civic activities

Simmons is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She has served as chair of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents and is an honorary fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

Simmons also serves on the boards of Texas Instruments, Goldman Sachs and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. She announced in 2007 that she would not seek re-election to the board of directors of Pfizer after serving on the board for 10 years.

On June 17, 2009, The White House announced that President Barack Obama had appointed Dr. Simmons to the President's Commission on White House Fellowships.

In February 2010, Simmons received a BET Honors award for her service as president of Brown University. She accepted the Honor along with other nominees, including Sean Combs, Queen Latifah, and music legend Whitney Houston at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

In 2010, she was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for her many humanitarian efforts.

Honoris Causa degrees

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• Amherst College
• Bard College
• Boston University
• Brown University
• Columbia University
• Dartmouth College
• Dillard University
• Ewha Womans University
• George Washington University
• Harvard University
• University of Houston
• Howard University
• Lake Forest College
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Morehouse College
• Mount Holyoke College
• New York University
• Northeastern University
• University of Oxford
• University of Pennsylvania
• Princeton University
• Providence College
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Rhode Island School of Design
• University of Rochester
• Smith College
• Spelman College
• University of Southern California
• University of Toronto
• Tougaloo College
• Union College
• University of Vermont
• Washington University in St. Louis
• Wesleyan University

[ Source: Wikipedia ]