Citation for Dr. Ruth J. Simmons
Educator. Scholar. Leader. Pioneer. Game-changer. “I was born at a crossroads,” you wrote in your powerful memoir, Up Home. “A crossroads in history, in culture, and a geographical crossroads in East Texas.”
You have demonstrated again and again: Crossroads are nothing but opportunities. Born in Grapeland, Texas, during an era of widespread segregation, you have always sought to understand your heritage and the history that shapes us all.
As the youngest of 12 children, you hadn’t considered college — until a teacher, Vernell Lillie, instilled belief in you and your extraordinary potential. Your academic path took you from Dillard University to Harvard for your master’s and a doctorate in Romance languages and literatures.
Upon graduation, you began a history-making journey in academia: as a professor at the University of New Orleans, California State Northridge, the University of Southern California, Spelman College, and eventually Princeton, where you served as Associate Dean of Faculty and Vice Provost. At every stop, you not only educated — but also served as a remarkable force for equity and opportunity.
After your selection as president of Smith College, you established the first engineering program at an American women’s college in history — a landmark moment for women in STEM. And when you made history, a few years later, as the first Black woman to lead an Ivy League institution at Brown, you did so with a bold agenda decades ahead of academic peers.
You established the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice — examining the university’s complex history with the transatlantic slave trade. You completed at the time the largest initiative in Brown’s history, a $1.4 billion campaign that enhanced the school’s eminence in the sciences and expanded access to a Brown education to talented students across the world, especially women and women of color. And you made Brown a truly global power — bringing global peers and top researchers to the institution in a way that had never been done.
After a brief “retirement,” your leadership was, of course, needed again, as it always has been. From 2017 to 2023, you strengthened and transformed one of the nation’s preeminent HBCUs at Prairie View A&M — growing its endowment by 40%, increasing fundraising, and boosting financial aid — and in doing so you ensured that Prairie View will remain a place where faculty, students, and staff can achieve excellence and follow their own path.
In the course of your remarkable career, you have been recognized many times: by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Association, the United Negro College Fund … by President Obama, Harvard University, the American Philosophical Society … you were named a Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year, Time Magazine’s best college president, and a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor … and many more honors. Consider this, today, yet another reminder of the extraordinary impression you have made on Barnard and institutions all over the world.
Dr. Ruth J. Simmons — for being a trailblazer, a disruptor, an educator and administrator unlike any we’ve ever seen; for lifting up thousands of young women and students of color; for reminding us that we all have the ability to thrive, if given the opportunity — it is our honor to present you with this 2024 Barnard Medal of Distinction. Congratulations.