Brown Taps 1st Black Leader

But higher education leaders are more impressed with the candidate's resume than her race.

Smith College President Ruth J. Simmons was unanimously elected by a search committee Nov. 9 as Brown's 18th president.

Simmons also will be the first permanent female president in Brown's 228-year history, and she follows University of Pennsylvania President Judith Rodin to become the second female president in Ivy League history.

She will take office July 1, 2001, after spending six years at Smith.

Simmons will succeed former Brown University President E. Gordon Gee and replace the interim President Shelia E. Blumstein.

"I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead this outstanding university in this exciting time in history," Simmons stated in a Brown press release Nov. 9. "It gives me enormous pride and joy to think that I will serve as president of an institution that not only has ideals I can share, but also earnestly seeks to love those ideals."

Simmons graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans and later received a doctorate in romance languages from Harvard University.

She also has held administrative positions at the University of New Orleans, the University of Southern California and Spelman College.

Simmons has received numerous honors, including the Fulbright Fellowship to France, the Centennial Medal from Harvard University, the National Urban League Leadership Award and was named CBS' 1996 Woman of the Year.

UNC journalism Professor Chuck Stone, who became acquainted with Simmons in the early 1990s, said she would be an asset to Brown.

"Simmons sends a message about making schools more inclusive," Stone said. "She will attract faculty, professors and students if people submit to her goals."

Stone said Simmons was working at Princeton University when he met her.

Simmons started as director of Princeton's Afro-American studies program before becoming associate dean of the faculty and then vice provost.

"Her progress is inexorable, and she is a dynamite scholar and good educator," Stone said. "I am not surprised at how fast she has risen up the ladder."

Brown spokeswoman Laura Freid said Simmons was well received by the campus community, which greeted her with four standing ovations at a Nov. 9 assembly.

"We are elated and the campus has been electrified since Thursday's announcement," Freid said.

Freid said Simmons' accomplishments at Princeton, where she was vice provost for three years, and the success of her presidency at Smith proved that she was a charismatic leader and well qualified for the position.

"We did not make the decision based on gender or race," Freid said. "We were just fortunate to find someone so capable."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.