Ruth Simmons
Former President of Brown University and Smith College
Author of Up Home
When places are looking for leadership, they're not necessarily looking for people who have the ability to be imitators, or to continue things as they have always been, they're often looking for someone who has the ability to move the institution forward.
Summary
This week on “Leadership Matters,” Alan sat down to discuss education, leadership, and experience with former Brown University President, Ruth Simmons. Ruth was the first African American President of any Ivy League university in the nation and has propelled each higher education institution she has worked with into the future.
Throughout this hour-long conversation, Alan and Ruth delve into her upbringing as the daughter of sharecroppers in Texas, her experience as the first in her family to receive a college education, and then into her leadership at Smith College, Brown University, and most recently, Prairie View A&M University.
Most recently, Ruth has authored her bestselling book, Up Home, a piece which details her journey “from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University”.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Ruth Simmons is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Rice University and Adviser to the President of Harvard University on HBCU Initiatives.
From 2017 to 2023, she served as president of the Texas HBCU Prairie View A&M University and was the first woman to hold that position. Under her leadership Prairie View was reclassified as an R-2 Research University. She also oversaw the creation of an African American studies initiative and a “Panther Success Grant” program at Prairie View to ease financial hardships on students at the HBCU. In 2001 Simmons was appointed president of Brown University.
During her eleven years in that role, Simmons appointed a university committee to investigate Brown’s historical ties to the transatlantic slave trade—which inspired similar initiatives at institutions across the world—and oversaw major investments in Brown’s faculty and research capacities, financial support for undergraduate and graduate students, and campus-wide diversity efforts.
As president of Smith College from 1995 to 2001, Simmons launched a number of important academic initiatives, including an engineering program, the first at an American women’s college, the creation of a poetry center that brought eminent poets to campus, and a student praxis summer internship program.
Simmons holds a bachelor’s degree from Dillard University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A French professor before entering university administration, Simmons held an appointment as a professor of comparative literature and Africana studies at Brown. She has served in various faculty and administrative roles at the University of Southern California, Princeton University, and Spelman College. Among her first academic positions was serving as the administrative coordinator of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)-supported Liberal Studies Project at California State, Northridge.
Simmons is the recipient of numerous 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. She has received over forty honorary degrees from universities around the world, including Oxford University, Ewha Womans University in South Korea, and the American College of Greece. Simmons is a member of the American 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 Alley Theatre, the MacArthur Foundation, Morehouse College, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Holdsworth Center, and Hines Global Income Trust. She received Brown University’s highest faculty honor: the Susan Colver Rosenberger Medal in 2011, and was honored by the Prairie View faculty in 2022. In 2012, she was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.
Episode Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
I'm joined today by one of the country's most respected leaders in higher education. Dr. Ruth Simmons is a three time university president, whose visionary leadership has shaped college campuses around the country. Ruth Simmons' inspiring journey in becoming the first black president of an Ivy League university, began as the youngest of 12 children in a family of sharecroppers. After receiving her Phd from Harvard in romance, languages and literature. Ruth has ascended from Professor to Dean to Provost and ultimately President of Smith College, the largest women's college in the United States. Following a storied tenure, that led to the first engineering program in an all women's university. Ruth became the 18th president of Brown University in 2001.
Named by TIME Magazine as America's best college president during her first year, Ruth Simmons was widely celebrated for her transformative leadership. During her decade-long tenure, Ruth completed a $1.6 billion fundraising initiative, championing a 20% increase in faculty and guided the universities. It was the greatest recession– or the Great Recession. Ruth retired from Brown in 2011. But we couldn't say that she'd retired for long. In 2017, she became president of Prairie View A&M University, a small HBCU University in Houston, Texas. During her final six year stint as president, Ruth Simmons increased donations to the university by 40% and secured the school's long term future. Earlier this year, Ruth Simmons published the memoir Up Home. It's a powerful must read book that I'm thrilled for us to explore together today. Ruth, welcome to Leadership Matters. I have been such a fan of yours for so many decades. And it is truly an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show today.
Ruth Simmons
Thank you, Alan, I'm very pleased to see you again. I'm very pleased also, to be here.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, thank you. Let's start with your early life in Texas. You were born in a small town outside of Houston as the youngest of 12. Children. What was life like growing up at home? A little bit about your parents and your siblings. It's a big family,
Ruth Simmons
Big family for which I'm eternally grateful. Well, I mean, as you might imagine, given the poverty of our circumstances, when I was born as the twelfth child, that was not a very happy occasion for my siblings. They wondered: “what on earth were we going to do with another child in the family?”. And so and so I came along, as a bit of an inconvenience, I would say. But thank goodness, I had 11 older siblings, who took care of me along with my parents, and taught me a lot about life and, and made fun of me, yes. And then chided me when I did things that they didn't like, but all the same. I was given a large and loving and close family, which remains true to this day. And that has much to do with who I am today as anything else.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. Tell us a little bit about your father's experience as a sharecropper. I'm curious, did that impact you and your development or how you see the world, I guess, for your siblings to have it by the time you came along. I imagine some of them are working already, because they're much older than you.
Ruth Simmons
Almost all are working because child labor was, you know, very widely in use during that era. And so as soon as you were old enough to drag a cotton sack, along the rows, and to fill it with cotton, you were enlisted into the project of farming. And so almost all of my siblings were child laborers, which meant that for the older group, they really couldn't even go to school, because farming was more valuable than an education. And so the older cohort never had a chance to finish school and generally got GEDs when they became adults and moved away from the town. That was a hardscrabble existence as you might imagine. My father was born in 1904. And of course, my mother in 1906. And coming through those difficult years, they knew, they knew starvation. Then new very difficult circumstances. I always say my father was irrevocably marked by the poverty that he experienced as a very young child. And as a consequence of that, he wasn't ever able to escape the kind of the weight of that, I would say, in addition, racism was very pronounced in the rural south at that time. And as certainly as a man, black man, you had no civil rights. You really scuffled for a mere existence. And you did not have the ability to speak out or to ask questions about your circumstances, or even to aspire to anything different. And so I held this against my father when I was very young, because I'd see him in town encountering whites. And I didn't understand why he was so subservient in his attitude, and why he taught us to be subservient, as well. Whether stepping off the sidewalk to let a white person pass, or whether they always say “yes, sir, yes, sir” to everybody, and bowing and scraping and so forth. I thought this was very difficult to take when I was a child. But of course, later, I came to understand that what he did with that is he saved our lives.
Because in that era, if you were at all to be problematic, you could be challenged, you could be punished, you could be executed. If you had the, so called wrong attitude. And so and so my parents did what they had to do to protect us from a very difficult era. And as a consequence, we all lived to adulthood, which was a magnificent thing for them to do for us. My father, of course, in his attitude toward whites, was subservient enough that they liked him. And they also gave him opportunities that they otherwise would not have given him because he was so obsequious. And so that allowed us to move to better circumstances from time to time because he was favored by the landowners. But eventually, this older generation in our family of children, moved away when they got married, settled in Houston, and began to work feverishly to find a way for our parents to move to Houston and a better life. And they finally achieved that when I was about seven years old, and we moved to Houston.
Alan Fleischmann
That was a big deal. And how much of the family moved with you was that with all the kids moved at the same time?
Ruth Simmons
Everybody who was left at home, moved when we moved, and that would have been two brothers and three sisters and me. So all of us that everybody else had already– had already moved away.
Alan Fleischmann
And would you move? Would the education experience change for you as well?
Ruth Simmons
Oh, my goodness, did it ever. First of all, you know, this extraordinary thing was that while in Grape Land in rural East Texas, school was secondary for Blacks. Because after all, what were we ever going to be able to achieve? We really didn't need it, it was thought. But then we went to the city. And in the city, there's something called required attendance in school, and that very fact, which meant that we had to go to school, that meant that suddenly going to school every day was a routine. And that, you know, obviously that was, oh my goodness, that was so exciting for me because I was a learner before I left grapeland. And getting to Houston and being able to be in school and to continue to learn was just the most wonderful thing that I could have imagined.
Alan Fleischmann
Along the way, this really was obviously looking at your journey, your life. Something had to have happened in those schooling years that inspired you to want to go to university, and also to be an educator. So I imagine there's some mentors along the way that that helped.
Ruth Simmons
My, well, from the very first time I actually started school before we moved, and I always pay tribute to my very first teacher who welcomed me into a world that seemed to me to hold every possibility. Her name was Miss Ida Mae Henderson. You know, we always said Miss, we couldn't say anything else. Miss Ida Mae Henderson. And she was such a lovely, caring, inspiring teacher, but this world of learning must be something if it can draw a person like that, who cares for her students, and who is so generous in every respect, that must be a world that's worthy of being a part of. And so I fell in love with school before we moved. And so coming then to Houston, and being embraced by a much larger cohort of teachers, was just even more important to me. And that's really my story. I went to public school, from the second grade, through graduation from high school in Fifth Ward in Houston, Texas. And now Fifth Ward, at that time was, you know, considered, oh, my goodness, an awful place, because it was full of poor blacks who most of whom had relocated from rural areas, and so forth. But the schools miraculously had these teachers who were superb. And they were not only superb, but they model life for us.
So here we are, in rags coming from the country, and their teachers who are so well put together their poise, they are that they have straight backs. The men are proud, and they speak beautifully. And, and so this is the middle class that I met a black middle class that I met for the first time in my life, and began to understand that not all blacks had the same kind of life that we had, and then began to ensure think that one day, perhaps I could have a different life from the one that was written for me, by the circumstances of my birth. And so through elementary school, junior high and high school, I had these miraculous teachers who cared for me, who pushed me, who said, you know, you can go to college, it was really a heretical thought. But they insisted, and it's only because they insisted that I ended up going to college at all. Because how could I imagine such an outcome given our economic circumstances? So I owe everything to these professionals, who looked out for me and who really wanted to see me achieve something.
Alan Fleischmann
There was one conversation in particular, I think you've mentioned where, where there was one teacher who had a conversation with your teacher, Betty. But there was one in particular that said, you know, the product, the possibility of university or college to you? I'd love to hear a little more about that. Was there that one moment where you realized, well, that could be me?
Ruth Simmons
Well, I mean, that's when she insisted on it. I didn't quite believe it. But I decided I would broach the subject with my mother. And so I went home after she said, you know, you can go to college. I went home and I said, Mama, could I go to college one day? Do you think that? You know, you would permit me to do that? Her face said everything. I looked at her. I was crestfallen, because I knew from her reaction, that she did not think that that was possible, and yet, not to discourage me. She said, Yes. If we can find the money. Well, of course, I knew there was no way we could find the money. So I took that as really a decision that I really wouldn't be able to go to college after all, but this teacher, so persistent, had gone to a college called Dillard University in New Orleans. And she contacted them and sought a scholarship for me, and they admitted me and agreed to this scholarship. And so I was able to go to Dillard with a scholarship. And suddenly, you know, everything changed. Because anonymous people, this is what is so powerful to me about, about the way we have raised the possibilities of so many people from anonymous people giving money, so that children they don't even know will have an opportunity to go to college, what a powerful thing that is. And so, and so I accepted the scholarship and got on a train and went off to college.
Alan Fleischmann
They were. And you had never been outside of your community at all? Had you been away from Texas at all at that point?
Ruth Simmons
Yeah, well I hadn't been anywhere, anywhere. And so, you know, I was terrified, of course, when I got on that train, and well terrified for a lot of reasons. Because first of all, you know, New Orleans was a great distance from Houston. That's number one. And I recognize that I wouldn't be able to come home very often. Secondly, I have never ever in my life been away from my family, ever. And I couldn't, I couldn't imagine what that would be like to be alone in a distant place. Without the support I had known for all of my life. And since they had always told me growing up that I was so problematic as a child, or so saif, my siblings, I didn't know I would be able to get along in this new environment since I was such a terrible person. And so I was full of doubts. I was full of fear. But this idea of continuing to learn just propelled me. I mean, I couldn't let go of it.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. The insatiable desire, the curiosity that is willing to learn. What was it like to be when you got there? Did that become your second home? Pretty quickly, was it a good experience being there?
Ruth Simmons
I didn't, as you might imagine, I didn't fit in. One of the pervasive factors during my development as a young person was the way to poverty. And so we had moved from this rural area of Texas to the city and never really fit in the city because we remained poor. We dressed improperly, we spoke and properly. We were clearly country bumpkins. Okay. And so that was the reality of living in Houston. At the time, then when I went to New Orleans. That was an extension of it, I didn't have the experiences of many of the students who went to Dillard at the time. First of all, I had been sheltered as a child. My parents didn't allow us to do anything. They were eternally fearful of our being harmed in a basically a very racist environment. And so, I had no knowledge of social skills, I had no ability to understand how to make choices and so forth, because I had been so sheltered.
So when I got to New Orleans, I imagined all the students in New Orleans who already knew the nightlife of New Orleans. And so they would go off to a bar when they had breaks, and I was always taught, that was evil. You never go to those kinds of environments where people drink. My parents did not drink, and they insisted that it was evil to drink. And therefore, we had to stay away from places where people were drinking, it was dangerous. And so basically, my life initially in college was I studied, I studied and I'd stayed on campus, and I didn't, I didn't go anywhere, in the way that the students that I knew were going out and having fun and enjoying this magnificent city, New Orleans, and so so I could have been anywhere it wouldn't have mattered. I didn't until my junior and senior year, I didn't see much New Orleans at all.
Alan Fleischmann
And then you were– did you know what you wanted to study when you're going into it? Was it actually– I want to do that, that's my major, I want to focus on these things. And you know, was there a mentor that guided you on that way as well?
Ruth Simmons
Well, I was driven by my mentors. Profession, my drama, and speech teacher was the one who inspired me to go to Delaware. And she had gone to Dillard. And so when I went to Dillard, I thought I would do as she did and major in Drama, but that I was quickly disabused of that idea. And then began to question what would be something that I would do that would be practical now, you know, so many students are led to professions or led to goals by people they know, and, and by encouragement of others to pursue certain fields, but I had nobody like that in in my life other than teachers. And so I had no idea what fields mattered and where they lead, and so forth. I was still just enthralled with the idea of learning as much as possible. And so whether it was a philosophy class, or a history class, or an English class, or a biology class, I was just enjoying all of that. It was not until a charming faculty member who seemed very exotic to me, because he was from South America. And he spoke with a wonderful Spanish accent. And he was very, very regal in his bearing. And I studied Spanish with him. And he said to me that I should, I should go to Mexico and, and learn Spanish. And I thought, well, what an idea that is, and he found a place for me to go in Mexico. And so I came home, surreptitiously pretended to be home for the summer, for a while, then I got on a Greyhound bus and went to Mexico, to live with a Mexican family and to study Spanish.
Well, I think once I started learning about other cultures, and histories, I just thought, “What a magnificent thing”. I've been stuck in a culture that I don't understand. Because I don't understand “why I'm treated the way that I am”, “why I'm regarded the way that I am”. And yet, I can look into other cultures objectively and try to sort out what's going on with human beings. And so and so I fell in love with language. And thought, well, this is a very interesting thing. I didn't know where it would bleed until later, people kept telling me it wouldn't lead anywhere. But I started with Spanish. And once I started Spanish, I continued with French. And then I was hooked on language study. And that's how I ended up choosing languages.
Alan Fleischmann
That led to, when did you realize you wanted to be a professor?
Ruth Simmons
Not until actually quite, quite late, I would say, for me, in every period, I always thought that my financial constraints would prevent me from doing the things that I would ideally like to do. And therefore I dared not dream too big in a way. And so I was more or less for a time content, to just keep learning, to see where that would take me. It was not until my senior year of college, when people started to say, “well, what about graduate school? Is that not something that would be good for you?”. Well, I didn't know where it would lead. I just knew that well. Does that mean I could stay in? In a framework of studying for an extended period of time? Yes, that's what it meant. And so yeah, that's what I was gonna do because I loved learning so much. Continuing in universities seemed like a very easy thing to do, even though I didn't know where it was going to lead me. But, so I applied for a Fulbright.
And I applied to graduate schools. And then miraculously, I won a Danforth Fellowship. And the Danforth fellowship paid for students to go anywhere they wanted to pursue a PhD. And it paid for everything, for the entirety of your period of study. It is such a miraculous thing. And once that was provided for me, I could go to college, I could go to university and get a PhD. And why not do that? And so that's what drove me into graduate school. And of course, once you get into graduate school, and you're pursuing a PhD, what are you going to do? Well, you're going to become a college professor. And so that's, that's how I backed into the profession that I've been a part of.
Alan Fleischmann
And was Harvard, definitely you're in Harvard, now you're in Cambridge, you're living in that incredible environment, that must have been very life changing. Going from New Orleans to Cambridge, Massachusetts being herded, all that experience must have been very fortifying in many ways. Realizing, well, it was your product, you may not acknowledge that, but there are a lot of ways you may realize how you have a special path that you're on.
Ruth Simmons
I have to acknowledge that this happened incrementally, because for my junior year, I went to Wellesley College for that year. When I came, I came back and finished at Dillard. And then I won a Fulbright, and so I studied in France for a year. So all of these experiences, you know, were giving me the wherewithal to think of myself as someone who mattered, and who had some capacity. And so by the time when I came back from my Fulbright experience, I got married, and, and then my husband went off to law school, and then I went to Harvard. I had a very unfortunate experience, my very first encounter with the class at Harvard. And it was a wake up call in that sense. And that is, I have just come from a year of hearing nothing but French and writing nothing but French, and so forth.
And so I'm in this class with first year graduate students. And the professor comes in and he says, I'm going to give you an essay, an essay exam, without preparation. And so he gave us a question, and we had to write out this exam in French. And he just, that was a means of testing the level of the students in the class. And when I next went to class, he started handing out the exams. And he called my name, and handed me mine. And I think he was offended by the fact that I had done so well, because he had begun by saying these are horrible essays. And he did that as a way of saying, “You have to work very hard, because this is not the level you should have”. And then he said except for one paper that is exceptional, I got an A+ or something on the paper. But he never forgave me for that. I could only assume it was because I looked the way that I looked. And he was not prepared for the best student in that class to look like me. So that gave me great pause. I have to say, in my early days at Harvard, I understood that it was not going to be easy, and that people would not accept me as an equal. Simply because I had done the work I had done before, I was going to have to work hard every day to prove that I deserve to be there. And that's really what it was like, during that period of time. I just had to work hard to prove that I was deserving of being at Harvard.
Alan Fleischmann
And then, I mean, you really were like a salmon swimming upstream. I mean, they're your whole journey. When you think about that. How did they build a lot of the fortitude, the grit, the determination muscles there because it wasn't like it came easy and the doors were opening for you. You literally had to find the key and unlock the door. And then people resisted that on the other side of the green, so yes,
Ruth Simmons
I don't want to suggest that there were never any helpful people, there were some who were immensely helpful to me in my time at Harvard. But as you must know, more for young people, we tend to remember those negative experiences far longer than we should. But I had the good fortune to have a visiting professor at Harvard who had come from Howard University. And he had, and they had to do that in those days, because there were no African American faculty at Harvard to speak of. And so they brought a visiting professor from Howard, who was an expert in African literature of French expression. And he's so inspired me that while I would have probably dropped out of school, at some point, he kept me going, because he opened an avenue for me to understand how satisfying it would be to have a career in university life. Because he was such a magnificent example of a person who had I mean, he had had it much worse than I for sure. This faculty member, and he had explored new subjects and written extensively and, and so he was an inspiring example for me. His name was Mercer Cook, by the way.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. I love that at the end of the day, when you think about who our mentors are, who our influencers are, role models are advocates. It's extraordinary, how many of them whether it was a one time moment or a multiple type of moments really played a role in helping, you know, give us the confidence, give you the confidence to know that the best is yet to come.
Ruth Simmons
Exactly.
Alan Fleischmann
It takes a lot of grit. So you went from there, and you did your first assignment. So I guess assignment, your first appointment as a professor was in New Orleans again, so you went back?
Ruth Simmons
Yes. Because my husband was from New Orleans, and we moved to New Orleans, after we finished our studies, and my first appointment was at the University of New Orleans.
Alan Fleischmann
But that's, that's well, before Smith, what was the timetable of when you got to Smith?
Ruth Simmons
Oh, my goodness. Well, that, you know, that was in the 70s. I started in ‘73. So that was well before Smith, which was, you know, almost 20 years before. Yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
So how long were you in– I don't want to say it wrong, I'm saying New Orleans, and you're saying New Or-leans? We just did Walter Isaacson and he was saying the same thing. So I know I have to say it differently. But it was– was that again, the whole way you really knew that you would have the satiable passion and curiosity but was also to lead through it but their academics and through and through teaching. When you're already in New Orleans, did you already realize that being a leader, not just being a professor was part of the journey that you really wanted to take your leadership positions as well?
Ruth Simmons
Well, I'll tell you the reason that I began to think in that vein was because I omitted saying how difficult I had been as a student in the sense that I was a meddler. I was constantly critiquing everything I was suggesting to universities, what they really should be doing to improve on their service to students. So that had been part of my path when I got to UNO, I had the chutzpah to suggest to my department that they needed to change the way that they were thinking now I'm a very junior professor. And all of these senior faculty members are looking at me saying, “you're doing it all wrong”. And so they started to get even with me, and they said, “okay, well, you're right”. “So why don't you go and figure out what we should be doing and come up with a plan”. And I guess, thinking that that would stop me, but it didn't. And so I came up with a plan to reorganize teaching in my first year. As a junior faculty member, and then, as a consequence of having done that, the dean of the school comes to me and says, “Would you be willing to become an assistant dean”? So that was my first experience with someone saying, “Okay, since you're an inveterate organizer, come into my office and serve as a Dean”. And then, you know, they found something to do with my difficult character.
Alan Fleischmann
Which means they must have liked some of your ideas!
Ruth Simmons
Well, they knew I was pushy, they knew that I had very strong ideas. But from my perspective, I thought, wow, that would be an opportunity to interact with the entire university. And perhaps in that vein, I could be far more helpful to students than being in this precious, esoteric field that I'm in, in the department seeing just a few students every year. So what drove me into leadership was the idea that I had some experiences that might help other students. And so I should work at the central level, rather than in a narrow field. So that's how I ended up going into administration.
Alan Fleischmann
And was it from there? Tell us a little bit, that journey a little bit from there to Smith, because you became more and more invested probably UNO became more and more of a voice there. And that's something obviously then the Smith opportunity came up?
Ruth Simmons
Well, there were a number of moves. After that, we moved to Los Angeles, and I became a Dean at USC. And, and continue to learn about how to use my particular interests and abilities to help students and I was getting stronger in that regard. And then I saw a posting from Princeton, that they were going to start an entirely new system. And this system was going to divide up the university into colleges, and these colleges, or we're going to work very closely with students in their development, I was enchanted with the idea. Because I'm still trying to find ways to see how we can best help young people develop into the people that they want to be. And so this idea really appealed to me.
And so I went to Princeton, as a Director of Studies for Butler college. And what I did all day, every day practically, was to sit and to advise students about their problems, about their studies, about their ambitions, and so forth. That was probably the best experience ever for me just to be able to do that. And to feel how much that mattered to me. And that set me on a course for what I was going to do for the rest of my career, because I found it very satisfying. And then some, I would say, 10 years later, is when Smith came calling, and said, Would you be willing to become President of Smith? But keep in mind, I'm still a nuisance. So when I go to Princeton, what do I do? I don't just help students, but I'm telling Princeton how awful Princeton is for students. How bereft of difference it is, how important it is for women to be treated differently. And for women to be added to the faculty, how important it is for African American studies to be fully respected and developed. So I'm a total nuisance at Princeton. So you can imagine with all of that, it surprised me gratefully for a college to come along and say, Would you be interested in being president? And my response to them when they approached me was, you must not know who I am? Because I couldn't imagine anybody wanting such a person as president, and so on.
But in all fairness, I should say that during that period of time, I had built a number of things at Princeton. That was quite successful. And it was probably, I had taken over Afro American Studies and built up the department I had recruited Toni Morrison to the faculty, and she had won a Nobel Prize. So there were lots of things like that, that said to people, I was some kind of, I guess, miracle worker. But I was also pretty difficult to deal with.
Alan Fleischmann
You know, it's amazing when you think about it, Princeton, Smith, these are schools especially then, you think of tradition you think of, you know, establishment, you don't think of transformation. And you were all about going right in the middle of the storm, if you will, at least the movement and transformation. It speaks a lot about their vision at the time, certainly because they knew they were getting a disrupter, an elegant one for that matter, and an articulate one. But someone who was going to lead transformation that led not only on tradition, certainly you celebrate tradition, but so the tradition that leads to transformation is really your, the legacy of your work, when you really face the best of the past, as you're forging ahead with the future. And I got to imagine, at that moment, in particular, it was a crossroads only because you're looking back at your journey and realize you lead that crossroads.
The truth is, yes, I don't think all that crossroads was evident, because you took us to a different way, you broke, you broke glass ceilings, you broke every ceiling. But you did it to places like Smith and Princeton, where they were so steadfast, they love their tradition, they were not known for the transformation, even though, you know, they were brilliant places for learning. But there were a billion places of learning, looking at the way it was always done. And really, when you took over, you were about what should be done, what should be done, what should be done.
Ruth Simmons
And this is why I usually remind my colleagues that usually really when when, when places are looking for leadership, they're not necessarily looking for people who have the ability to be imitators, or to continue things as they have always been, they're often looking for someone who has the ability to move the institution forward. And, so, so many people think of leadership as I gotta learn how to be– how to paint within the line, so to speak, I've got to learn to do just as it's been done before, but I've never thought that that was what I learned when I became president Smith. And that's really not what people wanted so much. They wanted to know how they could be best at what they are. And, so I tried to help them do that.
Alan Fleischmann
But you did something else too though. You were really trying to push this thing forward. Bringing women into STEM or really bringing STEM to women. When you were at Smith, and that wasn't what they were, that really was what they should be. It could be. And it was again, like whatever the hours that Sabbath to the street. There's a level of that there too, I'm sure. Looking back again, in many ways, Smith was the leader as the largest women's university and women's college, but it seems like it's so evident that you would embrace there but at the time “no”, right.
Ruth Simmons
It's always, I think, that people who work in universities invariably love and value what universities do. And they are very leery of people coming along and wanting to turn things inside out. And so when I went to Smith, and I said, you know, when I thought about all the issues that women had at that time, one of the biggest was that, that people were very reluctant to bring women into certain technological fields, thinking that they didn't really have an aptitude for it. And yet there were all these women who went to Smith, whose fathers were engineers, and they really would have loved to do engineering, but there was no opportunity for them. And so I thought, well, there are two things that a women's college could do. One is that it could show the way it could be the element of proof that women can do certain things. There were two areas I wanted to focus on. One was finance. And so we created a finance program. And then the other was of course engineering and when I suggested engineering people said “wait, wait a minute”. “We are a liberal arts college, we do not do professional schools here”. And so you know, yes, okay, so that's that, that was fine. I understood that. But they had that sometimes what people do is they come in different ways.
And so they came at it by saying, Well, if you do engineering here, it will take space away from the sciences, which are already short on space. And so we have no place to do engineering. So I said, “okay, well, I'll put up a temporary building”. And then that was horrible. Because Smith is an arboretum. And they love their space, everything is elegant and in place, and I'm going to put up a temporary building in the middle of campus. “How would that work”? I said, Well, you know, it will only be there for a temporary period until we can get a permanent building for engineering. So these are the kinds of things that you work through. And,I would say, most people would say, that's the best thing I did Smith. It was, it was the toughest thing in a way, but probably the best thing. Because sometimes when I go back to Smith, the Women in Engineering, line up to give me a hug. Because they're so happy to be able to study engineering in an environment that says, you can do engineering here.
Alan Fleischmann
Which is amazing, which is, that was transformational. That was a big deal. So Smith was an amazing experience. That's what I remember hearing about you the first time.. But then at. Brown, there was another moment. Where you kind of again, no one before you had done what you did. You really were a path breaker all through all of your journey. But that must have been a big deal as well, you know, to, you know, to take on Brown, and break many, many ceilings, not just the glass ones.
Ruth Simmons
Well, that was pretty terrifying. And when they first came to me and asked if I would think about being a candidate, I said, “absolutely not”. First of all, I loved Smith. And well, I never liked to leave my obligations. I'm always concerned about how my students see my actions. And, I didn't want to say to Smith students, they didn't matter enough. And so I absolutely refuse to become a candidate. They worked at it pretty hard. They sent the former president of Cornell to talk to me to reason with me, they continued to try to persuade me that this would be a wonderful thing for me to do, but I was not convinced. There's one thing that happened to me that gave me pause. And I had been at Smith, five years.
A woman on the board of trustees who happened to be African American, came to me and said the following. “Ruth, we love you at Smith, and we'd love for you to retire from Smith. But if you ever get an opportunity to become president of an Ivy League university, I hope you'll do it. Because breaking through that ceiling will be far more important than your staying at Smith for the rest of your career.” I was shocked by what she said. But I then began to think about the impact that it might have for many young people, if an African American could become president of an Ivy League university, because it then said to them, that you can do things that others might think you can't do. And working hard over a long period of time to learn and to grow and, and so forth, has immense rewards. And so I thought it represented so much that I ought to at least think about the possibility. And so once I said, “yes, I'll think about it”. You know, after that it moved pretty quickly, and they asked me to take on, take on the presidency. But, you know, I had a very hard discussion with them. And I said, I want you to understand who I am and who I am not. I am not a person who could be like the ideal president that you want. I am a person who, who came from where I came from, who wears all of that, today. Who cares about certain things, and will not leave them aside. I am someone who will be who I am no matter what. And you need to think hard about whether or not you're willing to have such a person as president. So we had a heart to heart about it. And once they said, Look, we know who you are. And we embrace that. And we want you as our president, I finally said, “yes”.
Alan Fleischmann
You're listening, you're listening to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. I'm here with Dr. Ruth Simmons, former President at Brown University, Smith College, Prairie View A&M University, and gosh, so much more. And we're talking about her journey. Actually, we don't have enough time in an hour to talk about her journey. But the one thing about you Ruth, which is so amazing to me, is that there was that consistency of your leadership, you've never abandoned your past, you brought your history, your heritage and your values. And that journey with you as part of the transformation you lead, whether we're talking about Smith, or we're talking about Princeton, or we're talking about Brown, or we're talking even about when you went back to Prairie View, and led there as your last stint as president, it's really been about, you know, embracing the future, that tradition, I talked to you about married with that transformation. But the one thing that I think encapsulates so much and I definitely want to leave a few minutes to talk about your book, is the fact that you were all about creating inclusivity in the midst of an exclusive environment that the universities are in. I mean, at the very start, this whole conversation is the youngest of 12 children, and you're off to go to university that just shows the exclusivity of university life, then for you to actually excel, even as a disrupter. And that excel as a leader, and then be recognized as the necessary leader to lead the transformation, not one, but three times, four times if we count Princeton really. And that's pretty amazing.
But all along, you've been ringing the bell for inclusivity not just exclusivity. And when you talk about your book, I definitely want people to read up on it, what made you do that? Because if anyways, I love the way you must have realized the passion for academia, the passion for what happens in a university setting. And right now it's being challenged today in ways that I had never seen where people are wondering is that the place where we're going to really decide tomorrow, the way we always imagined. And I still believe it is. As long as we have leaders like you. So I'd love to actually get your definition of that inclusive, exclusive challenge. and then talk about your book for a moment, because what propelled you to do it, it's an extraordinary book. And it really does make people feel a sense of optimism, and even to find the courage in themselves in order to lead that transformation. And I'd love to touch on those things as well.
Ruth Simmons
Thank you, thank you so much. Well, you know, imagine a child born in an environment where they are told repeatedly that they are– they're not worth much. They can't learn. They can't contribute. They're not entitled to be happy. They're not entitled to have access to others. And I've been shaped my entire life by the fact that I knew from almost from the time I was born, that was a massive lie that every child born, whatever the circumstances, ought to have a chance at life, at a life that is lived fully with the kind of learning that human beings ought to have access to. And that includes learning about other people. And they ought to be able to be secure, and safe. And so I have wanted that message to be clear to every child that is in your shot, or that can hear about my story.
The first thing I did when I got to Brown, this elite institution with many wealthy people, I said, “Let's make Brown available to every child no matter what their circumstances are in life”. And so my first step was to declare we needed to become need blind. And that's the proudest thing. I guess from my years at Brown, is making it possible for the poorest kid, as long as they have the ability to be able to join the University and not worry about whether or not it's affordable for them. And so, when it comes to the book, I had been asked for so many years by my students, “Ruth, how did you do this”? Because invariably, when they learned about my background, they began to conclude that the distance from where I started out, and where I ended up was so great, they could not. They couldn't understand how that happened. And they also asked me frequently, you know, give me a shortcut, what can I do that would be similar, but not be as hard as what you've been through.
So what I wanted to do is to make sure that my students didn't mythologize me, that they understood the rawness, the plainness, the basic aspects of my life, that I shared with so many others across the world. And that they understood that what they put into their lives, would have consequences far beyond what they could imagine if they only believed in certain principles, the principle of endless learning, the principle of being open minded, the principle of caring for other people, not just people from your tribe, but every human being, the principle of being able to understand that you can be impacted in a positive way, by people who are not wealthy, by people who are not learned, by people who have no advantages in life. So these are some of the things that my mother taught me. And I just wanted to make sure that people understood that my life is not anything exceptional.
It's just that I stayed on course, pursuing the things that I understood to be the most important things in life. I didn't expect it to lead anywhere, particularly, I just wanted to be happy and satisfied that I was always living a life that took account of what I learned from the life that I lived as a child. And yet it turned out to be something beautiful. And something that some people appreciate. And but that was not, that was not what I thought it would be. So my book tells a story of how from year to year, when I was a child, I followed a path, and I followed, basically the path of learning. And one of the most important aspects to me is that I learned how not to be angry, and how not to hate people who hated me, that I wanted to say above all, to young people today.
Alan Fleischmann
And the other thing that we learned, when we read that book or we watch and follow your journey, is it's okay to ask questions. It's okay, it's okay to rattle things off a little bit or to be disruptive or a disruptor as long as it comes with purpose and has impact, and has a strategy for the transformation that you have led in serious ways. And the legacy of that is that transformation in every place that you've served as a leader.
It's been such a pleasure that you've been listening to leadership matters on SiriusXM and leadershipmattersshow.com I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. We've had an incredible hour with Dr. Ruth Simmons, the former President of Brown University, Prairie View, A&M University and Smith College. And we've been discussing her journey, her life, her legacy or her continued work, her leadership, and also her book Up Home. And I really urge everybody to read it and listen to it if you want to do it on Audible. But it is such a pleasure and honor, I knew we needed another hour with you. There's so much, it's so great we may want to have you back, if you're willing, because it would be great to have you talk about your insights. The mentorship has been a big part of that elite, what influenced your journey but how you've influenced the lives of so many others as a mentor yourself and it would be great to, to distill that even more. Thank you for being here.
Ruth Simmons
Thank you. It's been a pleasure seeing you again and speaking with you. I can't thank you enough.