February Y2K1
First Black
in
Ivy League Presidency
By David Rising
Brown
University in Providence, Rhode Island, named Ruth Simmons its
president, the first black to head an Ivy League school.
The 54-year-old Simmons, who was president of Smith College, was
selected by Brown’s executive board in November.
The story was first reported by The Brown Daily Herald student
newspaper.
“We’re very sorry to see her leave,” Charles Staelin, a Smith dean
for academic development, told The Daily Herald.
Brown has been seeking a president since Gordon Gee resigned to take the
top post at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee after just two years, a
quick stay criticized by Brown administrators, faculty, alumni and
students.
Simmons became the first black woman to lead Smith, a 2,500-student
women’s school in Northampton, Mass., in 1995.
The youngest of 12 children raised by a Texas sharecropper father and
domestic mother, Simmons earned a scholarship to Dillard University in
New Orleans and graduated summa cum laude in 1967.
She earned a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literature from Harvard
University, and worked several years at Princeton University as a
teacher and administrator.
During her tenure at Smith, the school’s endowment nearly doubled to
$900 million. Simmons also established an engineering program, the first
at a women’s school.
In an interview with The New York Times, Simmons said that she took
pride in her less-flashy accomplishments such as creating the post of
provost.
“That’s the kind of thing I like, the hidden things,” she told The
Times. “It’s like cleaning. Some people clean just enough so that
what you see looks good. I clean so that you can move the chair out of
the way and not find dust bunnies under it.”
Brown, which has 7,000 students, has an endowment of $1.5 billion, among
the smallest endowments of the Ivy League schools. Simmons said that
might be too small to accomplish what she wanted.
“I know that sounds like a billionaire complaining he’s not as rich
as Bill Gates,” she said. “It’s not a dire situation by any
stretch.”
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