Passion, Generosity, and the Academy: Meridians Interview with Ruth J. Simmons Available to Purchase

Ruth J. Simmons has served as President of Prairie View A&M University, located in her hometown of Houston, Texas, since 2017. A French professor before entering university administration, President Simmons held an appointment as a professor of comparative literature and Africana studies at Brown. After completing her PhD in romance languages and literatures at Harvard, she served in various faculty and administrative roles at the University of Southern California, Princeton University, and Spelman College before becoming president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the United States, from 1995 to 2001. At Smith, she launched a number of important academic initiatives, including an engineering program, the first at an American women’s college, the Poetry Center, and the founding of the journal Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, which published its first issue in the fall of 2000. She left Smith to become President of Brown University from 2001 to 2012, which, under her leadership, made significant strides in improving its standing as one of the world’s finest research universities. Simmons is the recipient of many honors, including a Fulbright Fellowship to France, the 2001 President’s Award from the United Negro College Fund, the 2002 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the 2004 Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal, the Foreign Policy Association Medal, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, and the Centennial Medal from Harvard University. Simmons is a member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the boards of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Holdsworth Center. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Square. Awarded numerous honorary degrees, she received the Brown Faculty’s highest honor, the Susan Colver Rosenberger Medal, in 2011. In 2012, she was named a “chevalier” of the French Legion of Honor.