BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRICAN AMERICAN RUTH SIMMONS WAS THE 18tH PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT OF AN IVY LEAGUE INSTITUTION : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

                                BLACK          SOCIAL            HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Ruth Simmons (born Ruth Jean Stubblefield; July 3, 1945) was the 18th president of Brown University, the first black president of an Ivy League institution. Simmons was elected Brown's first female president in November 2000. Simmons assumed office in fall of 2001. Simmons holds appointments as a professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Africana Studies. In 2002, Newsweek selected her as a Ms. Woman of the Year, while in 2001, Time named her as America's best college president. According to a March 2009 poll by The Brown Daily Herald, Simmons had more than an 80% approval rating among Brown undergraduates.

On September 15, 2011, President Simmons announced that she planned to step down from the Brown presidency at the end of the academic year, June 30, 2012. After a short leave, she plans to continue at Brown as Professor of Comparative Literature and Africana Studies.

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 share cropper until the family moved to Houston during her school years. His father descends partly from Benza and Kota people slave 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 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.