Welcome to our black history women's History Month event celebrating Smith College president Emeritus Ruth Simmons Memoir up home one girls um Journey which was published in September 2023 by random house to Greater claim my name is Aaron Kamisha I'm the ru Simmons professor of Africana studies and I'm Janetta candelario I'm a professor of Sociology Latin americ Latino studies and the editor of meridians feminism race transnationalism we are grateful for the co-sponsorship of the study of women
and gender program Africana studies the French department and alumni relations thanks also to Ali I been binder um editorial office manager of meridians David ooit at academic assistant for Africana studies cat Dolan in the president's office Media Services especially Jeff Heath all of whom have provided invaluable behind the-scenes support that makes an event of this scope look easy and the alumni relations team especially Lindsay McGrath for making this event available to the worldwide Smith C
ommunity I understand that there are over 500 alumni registered as of today so we want to acknowledge your presence thank you very much for being here with us uh we would also like to give a special welcome to president Simmons's son krie cabal Simmons who is joining us here today and finally thank you to president Sarah Willie lebreton for immediately and enthusiastically accepting our invitation to welcome our esteemed guests president ameritel rof J Simmons and to reintroduce her to the Smith
College Community before turning the event over to president Sarah please allow us to offer you a brief overview of the program president Sarah will introduce president Simmons president Simmons will read a selection from her Memoir up home one girl's Journey up home brings you from Ruth Simmons um childhood as the daughter of share croppers in East Texas who becomes the first black president of an IV league university it is an uplifting story of girlhood and the power of family community and t
he classroom to transform one young person's life after the reading I will join president Simmons on stage for a conver ation about the book her work in higher education her scholarship and her Central role in the founding of meridians at Smith college we hope to have about 10 minutes at the end for any questions you might have those of you are here in person and also we've collected questions from the alums who have registered for the webinar and then I will return to the stage to close out the
event at 6 pm and to invite you to purchase the pre-signed copies of up home which are being sold by Northampton Bas broadside books just outside this room and now without any further Ado please join me in welcoming to the stage president Sarah Willie Leeton thank you Erin and Janetta and Ain again I'm so thrilled that you are the inaugural Ruth J Simmons chair of afriana studies everyone I am so pleased to welcome all of you this afternoon I have the distinct pleasure of introducing president
amera of Smith college Ruth Simmons as we celebrate her enduring Legacy at Smith and her new Memoir after completing her PhD in Romance languages and literatures at Harvard Dr Simmons served in various faculty and administrative roles at the University of Southern California Princeton University and Spelman College before becoming president of Smith college in 1995 while at Smith she oversaw the hiring of an historic number of Faculty of color who are now senior faculty here and who served the c
ollege in a wide variety of leadership positions she launched a number of important academic initiatives including our engineering program the first four-year Bachelor of Science Program at an American women's college The Poetry Center and she supported the founding of the journal meridians feminism race transnationalism which published its first issue in the fall of 2000 Dr Simmons left Smith to become president of Brown University where she was the first black woman to lead an Ivy League schoo
l and which under her leadership made significant strides in improving its standing as one of the world's finest research universities while there she also held appointments as a professor in the Departments of comparative literature and Africana studies she retired from Brown and returned to her home state of Texas but was soon called to serve as the president of prair R viw A&M University located in Houston she served as the first female president of Prairie View until just last year and under
her leadership Prairie View was reclassified as an R2 research University Dr Simmons is the recipient of many honors including a full bite full bright Fellowship to France the president's award from the United Negro College Fund the full bright Lifetime Achievement medal the elanar Roosevelt Valk Hill medal the foreign policy Association medal the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Centennial medal from Harvard University Dr 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 board of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American history and culture and the holdworth center for leadership in public education she also serves on the board of directors of the financial and marketing Services Company Square awarded numerous honorary degrees she received the brown faculty's highest honor the Susan Culver Rosenberger medal and was named a Chevalier of
the French Legion of Honor and perhaps most significance for this community received an honorary degree from Smith in 2014 most recently on February 21st Dr Simmons joined the LBJ School as its Barbara Jordan Forum keynote speaker and received the Barbara Jordan public service award which honors a Trail Blazer and leader who represents Barbara Jordan's voice Legacy and unwavering commitment to building community Through activism and public service currently Dr Simmons is a distinguished preside
ntial fellow at Rice University and adviser to the president of Harvard University on HBCU initiatives I have followed her career since I earned my doctorate in 1995 watching her unequivocal and yet strategic leadership Inspire Legions of Faculty students and staff please join me in welcoming the inestimable Dr Ruth Simmons that's why I keep him around thank you son it's such a pleasure to be here with you and to know of the work that you're doing here um one always uh worries about the future w
hen you lead an institution um and I'm back today and I see all the good works that you're all doing here and I'm immensely immensely proud of being associated with this uh Stellar Stellar uh institution so thank you I'm going to read from chapter 2 uh of my Memoir up home one of my earliest memories is of my mother sobbing as she read a letter from my brother Wilford Wilford Mama's third child left home in 1947 to join my oldest brother Elbert and seek work in Houston he found a job initially a
s a day laborer but enlisted in the Army in 1948 for a three-year Tour of Duty his motivation for enlisting was to earn steady pay that he could send to my parents in Grapeland even at a young age Wolford was family centers loyal obedient and generous generosity in the ubiquitously impoverished world we knew marked him as unusual his good nature however made him the object of teasing and bullying by family members and peers identified early on as mama's favorite he ened enjoyed her protection as
well as that of my older sisters and brothers when they saw others outside the family bullying him quick to cry in deep mournful howls he remained the butt of derision for much of his time in grapin and even Beyond but he was deeply loved and respected by everyone in the family the sight of my mother sobbing aroused in me the deepest feelings of uncertainty and insecurity I searched her face to understand what she was feeling she stood on the creaky leaning front porch of our paint starved hous
e as she continued to look down at the letter I eventually understood that wilford's letter had brought news of his deployment to Korea too young to understand the implic ation of this conflict in a distant country I cared only that this news had brought Mama the strongest person I knew to tears in the months that followed that moment when I saw Mama crying I frequently thought about how my life might change unexpectedly and over the next months I started to Pepper my mother with questions would
she and daddy always be there would my other sisters and brothers leave as Wilford Chester and Elbert had done would I see them again would I ever die as a contented child I had been immune to anxiety yet on the day that I began to understand Mama's fears for her children my worries commenced and they remained with me for most of my youth much later I came to understand better the true nature of my mother's strength but images of her vulnerability dominated these childhood years my mother has r
emained somewhat of a puzzle to me what must it have meant to be born Fanny Ula Campbell in 1906 in East Texas she spoke of her parents as the dominant influence of her life their story bespeaks the values she imparted to her own children Richard Campbell and Emma Johnson were rooted in what they had experienced from Slave parents Emma up to her death in 1947 followed many of the practices and habits her family had Acquired and preserved during slavery she dressed like a slave for all of her 75
years wearing long dresses made of bleached cotton canvas with an African headdress of similar fabric she wore plain white cotton dresses during the week and striped cotton dresses on Sundays like most at that time mama Emma which we Allied to M Emma had only one pair of shoes black high top work boots with laces she was not a large woman but her heavy petticoats gave the impression that her slight figure was bulkier in spite of her diminutive size people invariably remarked on her strength espe
cially her ability to carry large heavy loads on her head after the style of African women she frequently carried water from the well with a full bucket on her head and one in each hand Emma had an unusual way of expressing herself thee better get thee biscuit on that stump she would say to grandchildren who misbehave a woman of imposing and some would say Fierce man she was also a memorable dis disciplinarian she would direct the miscreant to a small tree stump that provided child siiz seating
on her front porch she and my grandfather Richard must have struck quite a picture together she with jet black skin wearing stark white clothing and a headdress and he tall handsome and extremely fair when Richard died the land he andu had purchased provided the only means for Mom Emma to take care of and protect her family Emma eventually remarried but her new husband declined to work in the fields Emma who couldn't bear to see her children laboring while their stepfather did nothing confronted
him the children are in the fields and the is in the house sleeping get the things and get out she ordered she never married again keeping the homestead going with animals to tend and fields to plant was a challenge her three daughters and son were responsible for much of the labor one daughter Jim had died in an early in early adulthood and a son Richard had been shot in the kneecap at the age of 16 while hunting with a cousin and did not survive Emma managed to see the remaining children live
to adulthood when they married had families they settled not far from the Campbell Homestead and Emma's grandchildren became fixtures in her house Too Young when she died I did not have the pleasure of being consigned to her tree stump for misbehaving Richard Campbell's patrici and loving nature and mma's strength and Independence helped mold my mother's Spirit mama was quiet reflective kind generous and forgiving the turmoil of a 12 child household did not seem to phase her nor did the need to
rise at 4 a.m. to prepare for a day of cooking cleaning and working in the fields I often thought that she settled for too little in her life she voiced no complaints except those pertaining to our misbehavior she cared little for her appearance and seemed satisfied to comb her hair or fix her braids without fuss and to wear crude and sometimes tattered dresses that no vain woman would Dawn deeply religious and attentive to following the Bible's teachings Mama saw her life as having a specific
purpose of overriding importance was seeing her children taught the right values and ensuring that they lived to adulthood but her life was to be considerably more complicated than these simple goals she set for herself thank you thank you so much president Simmons for that reading and for joining us again today um before we begin I want to thank you for the work you did as president of the college without which I have often said I'm fairly certain I would not have been hired onto the faculty at
Smith nor would meridians the women of color feminist Journal I now have the privilege of editing have been founded 24 years ago in addition to the many other transformative projects and initiatives that you seated that have bloomed and blossomed over the past 25 years um so as you know from our earlier conversations I've been studying up on your biography reading interviews essays and even a dissertation that was written about you as well as watching broadcasts such as finding your roots episo
de season 1 episode 7 in case anyone wants to watch it um and the 60 Minutes interview with you in which you share some of the details about your family's story as well as your own educational and professional experiences however few interviewers ask you about your scholarship even as they note that you took your PhD from Harvard in French languages literatures and cultures where you were also introduced by Dr Mercer cook to the negritude movements origins in frankophone Africa and the Caribbean
and especially the work of Martin nin imy cir and sagales Leopold sangor you also undertook a study of the educational system of Haiti in 1985 while you were on the faculty at Princeton so I'd like to begin our conversation by asking you to speak to how your formation and contributions as a scholar of black frankophone movements societies literatures and cultures influenced or intersected with your work as an academic leader thank you and thank you again so uh so dear ly for having me um and fo
r your care um of Meridian such an important project I'm very proud of the fact that is housed here uh and nurtured uh here at at Smith as as it should be well um uh as as I told you earlier um I think um when I was studying uh people thought thought of of me as an odity uh because it seemed rather far-fetched uh for someone from Fifth Ward in Houston Texas uh to study uh French and so um they raised questions all the time about uh how meaningful or rather how meaningless that was in the context
of the turmoil of the Civil Rights struggle um and so um but because Mercer cook did come to Harvard as a visiting Professor when I was a student there and I was introduced to the world of frankophone um uh frankophone literature of Africa and the Caribbean my life changed um and I came to have examples of how I could exist in the cultural environment of the country that I live in um and so as you may know CER and Sango undertook to shape um uh an expression that was unique to their cultures um
they asserted they were entitled to do that and that they would not be a mere imitation of French language and culture um they would shape their own culture while using the French language and I just thought that was so so brilliant um uh both men uh were quite acclaimed as um as uh authors but cir struck me particularly as um a magnificent human being and uh so I wanted to study him in particular because he was um had an aggressive uh style of writing uh about his homeland um changing the lang
uage uh in such a visceral way asserting powerfully that I can speak about my culture and about my country in my own voice um in a way that is unique um and so I I I went to um martinque to meet him um and to interview him and I would say that that was that was an amazing moment for me um because uh you see he was he was real he he was a human being that I met and so the idea that people like him could exist because you I'd read Mon and Duell and all of those people who tried to shape the French
language in a unique way but here was the man in front of me um who was doing this and as a consequence of that I started thinking about what we could do in this country to shape a a unique uh language um a unique expression um and to assert our place in this very diverse uh environment where we live and that led me uh over time to really take an interest in uh building uh departments um of women's studies of um African-American um and Latino studies and so forth um to emphasize how vital it is
to a people um to own their culture and their language and to be able to express uh themselves fully in it and that's really what caused me to become a university president because I took on the uh afroamerican stud building the afroamerican studies program at Princeton um with some success and as a consequence uh I gained a profile of building programs and that's what led me into a presidency so so that that really U so my my academic work um and my scholarship uh at the point where I began to
think that I needed to fix universities um took a backseat um and yes I was that uh I was that crazy I thought I I had an obligation to try to make these places better um and so uh so um my my teaching took a backseat to that and I was busy trying to reshape what universities could be um and um but it was all from the influence of my studies uh that caused me to do that so you you were sharing with us earlier about the story of how you went about speaking with your colleagues both your faculty
colleagues and administrators at Princeton about the not only the need but the fact that there was Ample Ample ground for establishing an afroamerican studies program could you share that story with the audience today around the process that you undertook with your legal pads and how you said about creating the the evidence well I you know I uh there are certain proof points that are undeniable uh undeniably important at Princeton at the time um I would say the university uh leadership didn't th
ink much of afroamerican studies uh it was not supported um well at all um and um and so um there was no investment in it so they came to me and asked me if I would lead afroamerican studies and of course I said no I absolutely would not um uh and um I they ask why I said because you obviously do not care about Afro-American studies if you want to put a French Professor there to lead it when they know nothing about afroamerican studies and so um the very fact that you don't care is enough for me
to say no um but they called me back and said okay well Ruth we need a black face um and so would you tell us what it would take for you to do this and so I said the the eight things I need and I ran down the list and after each one um they said done they were pretty desperate um but um the one thing that I knew which which I think is so important for people understand is that um of course expertise is very important but sometimes uh just caring is important too and I knew that of all the peopl
e there uh I cared most about afroamerican studies although I knew nothing about it um and so uh so I got busy uh I got a legal pad and I wrote down um the names of uh Scholars who could really teach prinston a lesson if they were appointed there okay because Princeton didn't understand how extraordinary it would be to have great Scholars like these um in the mix so I I wanted to show them that and so I just went down the list uh recruiting uh faculty and the first um uh faculty member that I re
cruited was Tony marrison and um when Tony came right after she joined the faculty she won the Pulitzer and then of course the Nobel Prize and it was like a light was turned on at that moment uh when she won the Nobel Prize it was a funny story that morning I was watching the news and they said uh Tony marrison has won the Nobel Prize and of course I screamed first and then I called her and I said Tony why didn't you tell me and she was very annoyed it was early in the morning and she said tell
you what um I said why didn't you tell me that you had won the Nobel Prize she said but I haven't won the Nobel Prize haven't gotten the call yet um I said but you have because they announced it on television she said don't you think if I had won the Nobel Prize I would know anyway check the V mail but they they called her later uh but it what a transformation suddenly uh Princeton started owning the fact that they had uh Tony Morrison and that she was a Nobel uh prize laurate the president of P
rinceton went over for the ceremony um and so forth it was uh so sometimes um just showing people is much better than hanging them um although I I didn't fall short in hanging people either but but that was that was an important moment and after that um it was considerably easier to make appointments across the university including um appointments of of of women uh on on the question of women I was I was incensed I was incensed about a lot I was incensed about the fact that there were so few wom
en faculty at Princeton um and in particular uh in uh engineering and uh and in math um math said there was no woman in the world who was qualified to be appointed to the math faculty and they sealed that by having no women's restrooms in the Math building um and so I was I thought well something's got to be done because we have all these women at Princeton now and they have no uh faculty women faculty and so I decided to take matters in hand and to write a white paper about this and of course i
n typical fa fashion I I wrote the paper and that next morning I walked into the president's office and the provos uh office and gave them a copy of my white paper and said here I'd like for you to read this and they did the next day I was called in uh by The proost Who said We we read your white paper I said well very good and then I was turning to leave a and he um and this was Neil rudenstein um and he said uh and we agree uh so go do it so they gave me a fund uh to fund faculty positions to
appoint women in engineering and in in math and in a single year um I went to math and said um I know there are no women qualified to be appointed in math but if you find any no matter how many I will give you the positions to hire them and you don't have to use any of your positions for it and they came back with six proposals um so again sometimes you just want to show people that um you know what sometimes they truly don't understand uh what the issue is well yes if it's free I'll appoint a w
oman but if I have to use a a Priceless um slot uh that could very well go to a man I don't want to do that uh and so sometimes you have to find ways to expose um the reason that people are uh engaged in that kind of behavior so so but again all of this is largely from the kinds of things that I learn reading 16th century uh and 17th 18th century literature um uh and uh and I just feel so strongly that the humanities uh can fuel a lot of uh interesting approaches um that we don't have to be stud
ying only technical um uh Fields um so I I I'm really trying to uh encourage people to read more in the humanities and in the humanistic social sciences that comes across in so many of the interviews and essays that you've written about these questions um you also mentioned in one of the interviews that a couple of things one is that you did your junior year as an undergraduate at Welsley and also that while you were at Princeton you you did a two-year I think visiting professorship at Spelman C
ollege so transitioning into um your arrival at Smith how did those experiences at these other women's colleges prepare you to come to Smith if at all or what was that interaction like well first of all you know I'm I'm a product of my um the way that I grew up Frank Frankly um it was very clear made very clear to me uh when I was a child that uh I was not to be ambitious that I was not to um outdo um boys in any way uh that I needed to be subservient um in you know in every respect and um it wa
s very hard to grow out of that frankly because um that continued and it was ratified in the black community large largely um through churches and uh through the Civil Rights struggle where Women's voices were muted um in favor of showing a strong uh black men um and so uh so I'm I'm a product of that time and um really uh when I went to Welsley uh it that was the first time um I encountered the idea of women doing everything that men do um and so the moment that I saw Margaret clap president of
Welsley yeah she was serving tea but but still she was running a university she had been an ambassador this woman uh and I thought gee this is this was in the 60s correct uh or 50s yes that was that was in 65 and my goodness the idea of and of course the whole campus um where women were empowered to do things and not take a backseat to anyone um so that had a profound uh impact on me I would say definitely um and um when I left Princeton I was on a track uh that was pretty promising I would say
at Princeton but I decided Well wow this is a very elite institution but why don't I take what I've learned and go someplace where I can be really helpful um and I decided to go to Spelman and I didn't go as a a visiting faculty member I went as proost at Spelman and um and that was very that was a very important moment for me um because um you know in some ways I learned a lot more at Spelman uh because I couldn't get away with the same things that I got away with at Princeton uh at at Princet
on I was this Mad Black Woman right um uh constantly complaining about things and then pressing the university to do certain things uh but at Spelman um I was uh you know I was the chief academic officer um and here I was coming from Princeton to tell these black uh people what they should do well you see the dynamic already and so I made a lot of mistakes when I went to Spelman in trying to bring things from Princeton uh that were particular to Princeton to Spelman and um I learned my lesson um
that that that was not suitable um for Spelman um but we did some very uh good and important work there uh but uh but I had to learn that every environment is different um and not to try to import uh ideas from places like Princeton wherever you go um and so so those those experience experiences were very valuable in really um my preparation to become a president uh because um I learned to listen uh listening is so hard when you think when you think have all the answers it's really difficult um
and that's the way I was um and so uh that that experience at Spelman really put me on a course to be more generous um with my uh uh with my work um and to let other people into the process of shaping programs and solving problems and so forth and I really think that that helped me immensely um become you know a much much better uh much better person um and so from from Princeton um I went back to Princeton and from that experience I was then uh looked at to become College president so could yo
u share the story of how that came to pass that you agreed to consider the presidency at Smith and then I want to ask you another question about Spelman and the Smith connection but we'll get back to that well I you know I was I had come to believe that U I was a bit of a pariah uh and that because of all of my hectoring people and being so unpleasant for so many years that that would live with me forever and I thought I would frankly not I wasn't suitable to be an upper level um uh administrato
r or leader of a of a college or university um uh there was a wonderful man who was um well two men at Princeton who were very instrumental uh in my development one was Aaron lionic who was um a terrifying man um and um but he was probably the first uh person uh in my career who was honest with me uh he gave me um criticism that wounded me deeply at the time but of course I now know that um he paved the way for me to um become the leader that I became by being honest with me also I I recognized
afterwards that he respected me enough to be honest with me so I always tell my students get away from those faculty who are praising you and saying how wonderful you are find The Faculty who are willing to be honest with you and respect who you are um and um and so so the second person was um the president Harold Shapiro and for some reason Harold Shapiro just decided that I was on my way to a presidency I didn't believe it but he but he did and so he uh had a way of providing ways for me to le
arn things and I didn't understand what was going on but it was very helpful so one day um I was contacted by the uh Smith board and ask if I would be willing to to be considered for um uh the Smith presidency and of course I said no uh I would not um because honestly um I thought it would be a sham search um in those days um people would include uh blacks in searches and they had no intention of appointing a black person uh as a president and to that point there had never been a a black person
really appointed to a similar kind of uh institution and therefore I thought that they were uh being dishonest with me so I I said no I wouldn't participate in in a sham um but they kept that ated and and convinced me that they were serious and uh and so I uh went for an interview and after the interview they told me that they were focusing um on me um and uh they were going to do a background check uh and so on which I was offended by that because I thought well are you doing background checks
for everybody or are you just doing it for me because I'm black I mean what's what's that all about um and so uh so but in any case they did it and then um uh they've finished that process and invited me to become president but I still wasn't satisfied um and so I had to have a heart to heart talk with the um uh with the board uh and uh say you know I can't be uh I can't be your person um I only know how to be one person and that's me that's who I am with everything that I am and if you want som
eone who can be um you know follow in the tradition of Smith women uh being very U poised and cultured and social and all of those good things that's that's not who I am many of us would disagree with that it's I say that that's not who I am and so uh but they said no we understand who you are they didn't um that we understand who you are and so we sealed the deal and I I um I agreed to come but I was I was terrified um until that point um nobody really knew who I was I would say because I was u
m very proud of being a private person and I was very suspicious of people who needed to know everything about me why why do you need you need all you need to do is see my work um and uh apprehend uh my uh intelligence uh that's that's all you need why do you need the rest of it and so uh so I had not disclosed an awful lot about my background at that point and when um the announcement of my appointment was made and the Articles came out about my um uh about my appointment at Smith then all of t
he details came out about my go being from um Fifth Ward uh having grown up poor um having a family of sh cers and so forth that was the first time anybody really knew that story um and I didn't realize that it was valuable for people to know who I was uh but um after that and after the mail that I got from people around the country saying um I think I understand that there are things that I can do now um so I always say to uh to people it's very important for each of us to disclose Who We Are i
n full because somehow I never imagined that that would Inspire anybody or be um meaningful to people um and I was so wrong about it uh so uh I'm I'm glad it finally uh came came out and I think the relationship that I've enjoyed with my students over the years has been um principally because they have those details about my life well that that's a wonderful way to segue into a question about the actual Memoir um because one of the things that again that I noticed in in reading the interviews an
d listening to the interviews is that you do share bits and pieces of your story um at the point that you are writing about these things when you're president of Smith and are now in National prominence in these ways and subsequently of brown um you share the stories about your mom you mentioned grap land and so forth but but really it's not until the Memoir that you offer us the Fuller account and and actually one of my students in a class that I'm teaching um sent along a lovely question and I
'll paraphrase it for her but it's basically about one of the most challenging things about writing a memoir is that balance between be revealing aspects of one's story and by extension our families and our communities and and the other players in our live story um and preserving privacy or discretion and and that is such a difficult line to walk um so a memoirist now I was wondering if you could speak with us a little bit about that that the challenge of both revelation of self because it does
provide inspiration it is a role model you are a first in so many ways including in your own family um and so many of us are inspired and need that on the other hand not every reader not every listener is going to be supportive or or generous right with us so how how has that been for you Dr Simmons that balance between revealing and preserving well uh certainly um when I um decided to write it um I had to determine whether or not I could do it truthfully and fully I knew beforehand that I would
not complete it if I couldn't do that so one of the things that's most important I think for me and goes back to my mother certainly was for every part of my character and my life and my actions to be attuned to the truth um of what I believe um and who I am and I struggled for a while with whether or not I could actually write it um because um I didn't know whether or not I could be fully truthful um given the fact that it would be um harmful in some instances to people um if I did that um but
I had a choice this is not the book people wanted from me the book people want from me is the inside story of higher education that's what they want from me um and then I knew for sure that telling those stories would be very explosive um and therefore I was very reluctant to start there um and so I wanted to start with myself and whether or not I had the courage to do that fully so I think in writing a memoir you have to make that decision first uh how how uh how um full are you willing to be
with who you are um and if you're not you probably shouldn't right it because people will be able to see through that um but uh but there were very uh definitely parts of the book that were very hard to write um I didn't know for example whether I would be able to write anything about my mother because my mother died when I was 15 I have mourned her death for every moment of my life sense and for most of that time I couldn't even speak about it so and sometimes now I can't speak I can't speak ab
out it um so I didn't I didn't know if I could write about her in particular uh because it would be so difficult to do um and I knew if I wrote about my father I would have to write the truth about my father he was a very complicated um uh man who uh was um um imprisoned uh by the circumstances of his time and um but I wanted to tell the truth about him too so uh so it was a struggle and I didn't I didn't look for a precise balance between the one and the other um I just sat down and um and trie
d to communicate as much as I could about what I had lived um and how I felt about what I had lived so I I want to quote something you said in one of your essays in 1998 while President of Smith college you published an essay entitled quote my mother's daughter lessons I learned in Civility and authenticity which was reprinted 10 years later during your presidency at Brown University by the Texas Journal of ideas history and culture in celebration of women's History Month in that beautiful essay
which I recommend highly by the way to everyone um you pay homage to how your mother quote showed you how she could with Grace magnam minity and AUM carry out the most difficult and most unfulfilling work which one could say about you as well Dr Simmons in terms of the leadership roles that you have played so many of the questions we got from the alums were were asking about your time at Smith and if you could share with us reflect with us um how what you remember most about that time how your
mother's example carried you through some of the difficult moments perhaps of being president president of Smith um and also this question of Civility and authenticity because um that is a perennial question right in in University spaces and college spaces where debate is at the heart of what we do so that's a a very complicated question but yeah any part of that well um first of all I was I was beyond happy as Smith's president um first because the students welcomed me so warmly really I mean i
n a world in which um you know it there is there's often awkwardness between faculty and students between Administration and and students um I just couldn't believe how warm uh and accepting uh people were of me here at Smith and took me a bit by uh surprise um and in some you know there's some silly things that happened here that I I always remember um as an example of um something I wasn't trying to do but that happened nonetheless so I was um I'd gone to The Faculty Club for an event one day
and I was um uh driving back up uh campus and I noticed there was a Smith student struggling uh who was on crutches she was struggling to get up the the the hill and I stopped of course and said um get in I'll take you where you need to go and then to my horror she said president Simmons no if you could do what you you've done with your challenges I can certainly get up this hill on crutches and I thought well hot that's not that's not what I want that's not what I want people to think okay um a
nd so I uh one of the things that I was always struggling with is try to try to bring that down a notch okay because um I wanted people to see me um for who I am and not um venerate me to uh a ridiculous degree um and I didn't want that Gap to be so wide and that's why I always insist that students call me Ruth and uh and not treat me as um an iconic individual um or as a Mythic individual who struggled through all kinds of things and overcame I mean that's ridiculous so because and partly I did
n't want that because I want them to see that every Avenue is open to them to learn to take advantage of um uh of what they uh encounter um to be open to other people um and that's why I always um wanted I always talk to students about sharing who they are with others and communicating across vast uh differences uh because if you can't do that in college you're certainly not going to be able to do it after you leave college and we have a country that is in deep trouble uh because we still have n
ot learned the fundamental elements of talking to each other um uh respectfully um and uh and caring about others different from our group um and so I I felt here at Smith that I for the first time had a way of of um taking on the Pastoral role and caring for um students um trying to uphold certain values to them and hoping that somehow by doing that um their lives would be uh more uh meaningful because I tried to live those values and they could see those values reflected in me um and so that's
so that's that was something that I didn't know I had exactly until I came to Smith um but but students were so responsive that I began to um uh learn um that in a way that and and the and the way that they treated me was uh eventually so comforting except in one instance when uh I was trying to raise money for the Campus Center and um I went out to California to see Mrs huet uh of huet Packard um and I thought well she has enough money to you know pay for a Campus Center for Smith and she was
a Smith Alum so I invited her to come for a visit and she was lovely she came for a visit and she was staying at um at the president's house and I was very excited and we came down and we were at breakfast um and we were chatting and there was a noise outside and I thought well okay the doorbell rang I think and I decided okay well the doorbell is ringing I knew that the staff were busy so I got up from the table to go to the door meanwhile I saw the staff running toward me asking me not to open
the door no don't open the door um but it was too late because I opened the door and there are these um uh uh these these women in um various uh various stages of nudity um in the in the yard okay okay um and so and then I think oh dear Mrs hillet you know is here and so she came out uh she heard the noise because the students were cheering or something uh uh and uh she saw the students in this state and she was she laughed so she thought it was hilarious um and and so on so um so sometimes uh
there were Antics that were a little bit um uh challenging for me to deal with but otherwise uh it was um they they treated me with such um uh love and respect and I'm forever grateful for that well I have to say that as a faculty member who arrived at Smith as they said during your presidency I think that that sentiment extended into the faculty particularly those of us who um were part of the the newer cohort that that uh you welcomed into the college and um I think I think I can safely say th
at because of that we have uh helped to transform Smith into the the kind of institution that that you'd hoped we would become definitely as part of that you were instrumental in the founding of the journal meridians this morning um we were able to show you the exhibit that we put up with the 24 year history Wonder wonderful we're about to come on our 25th anniversary five years no it's hard to believe oh so I was hoping you could say a word or two about that because as I understand the the stor
y a group group of my senior colleagues most of whom have retired now with the exception of Vicky Spelman who's joining us here today and is about to retire um approached you with an idea about founding this journal at Smith so could you say a little bit about that and how it was of a piece I would argue with the work you had been doing for decades already around transforming the academy well certainly um you know one of the biggest challenges at that time time uh was the fact that um Scholars c
ouldn't get published because perforce if you wrote about uh issues of concern to to women or uh to minorities um finding um finding a venue uh for publishing that work was very very challenging so when the idea came for a a journal that focused on um on women um of many cultures um and um but but here a a journal that was refereed where Scholars could get their work published I thought it was a brilliant idea um and that it really belonged at a place like Smith um and so I was very happy to uh
to support it and uh thrilled that we had an opportunity to make an important statement and that statement was about the way the academy organizes itself to exclude uh to exclude people who may think differently to exclude um ideas that are are different to exclude people who present a different profile and so I was always trying to tweak that um at every opportunity so when I was working on the appointment of Tony Morrison who did not have a PhD um and um I thought she should have an appointmen
t uh as a cheered professor in English without a PhD um for example and when I brought Paula Giddings here without a PhD um because her work stood for what her value was and nobody had ever seen it they would only give her temporary appointments up until the moment she came Smith as a tenur professor so um every time we have an opportunity to show the ways in which we can improve um the academy or improve Society we had to be busy trying to do that and meridians was one of those ways of getting
in front of people and saying this is what is missing from the academy absolutely and it really it it has I think transformed the academy and multip mulle fields of knowledge and it has played a central role in um tenure because we have hued to the highest standard of double anonymized peerreview and we're now published by a tier one University press and so forth and um your quote from volume one number one Graces almost everything that we put out in the world women of color have many histories
and these histories can be brought into full and sharp Relief by providing opportunities for these women to speak for themselves um and certainly that is our mission for themselves to speak for themselves and that's why your Memoir it's so so much a part of that um let's see I want to ask you some of the questions that the alumni sent in one of them was um well they all they said over and over again that you were president for many of their uh four years they felt such great admiration for you u
m and if you have a favorite memory other than the invasion by the near naked students while you were hosting or you were hosting um misset oh goodness there's so there's so many there's so many memorable stories Good goodness um we brought Ruth Bader Ginsburg here um and why do I always recall the troubling ones but anyway um Ruth big Ginsburg was um here for an event and um she was staying at the president's house and um I got up early uh to go down and make sure she had breakfast and all that
sort of thing um and I was down there she had brought her granddaughter uh who was I think about um seven years old or so um and uh I was downstairs uh and her granddaughter came came down and said I can't wake Grandma I said oh don't don't worry she's sleeping soundly uh go back upstairs and then put your hand on her shoulder and shake her gently and call her name and I'm sure she'll wake up so she went up and she did that and then she came back and she said I still can't wake Grandma well I'm
going into full panic mode because I'm saying to myself Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not die in this house okay I was I was panicked absolutely panicked but I didn't know what to do because with Ruth Bader Ginsburg I couldn't go up there and and into the room and say wake up right yeah I couldn't do that so I'm I'm I'm just immobilized so finally I decide I could either stay downstairs and fall apart or I could go I could be brave enough to go up there and walk in her room right and that's what I d
id so I I said come on let's let's go up so I knocked on the door no answer I knocked again no answer I opened the door and I walked in she was in bed I walked over to her and I touched her and I said J glenburg J is Ginsburg and she woke up I said oh I'm so sorry but your granddaughter was so worried because you didn't wake up when she tried to wake you up so I mean that that's you know that was that was that was but um but I remember with great fondness all the extraordinary people who came he
re um to um interact with students um to talk about their lives um and and so on and of course there's so many famous women associated with uh with with Smith and will be forever um that you know I also remember um Barbara Bush and President Bush um inviting me to uh kab buunk port for a day and uh it was in many ways very um interesting and Str strange day um but um but it was a glorious day quite quite beautiful and in fact a a photograph of U of me with president and and Mrs Bush on on the Ro
cks um overlooking the the um uh the the water uh is on my desk but uh but the thing is that um the unsettling thing was that they were really very Republican and and I'm not and so we were chatting and they were probing uh for my opinion about various things and dog on it they asked me about my opinion of Clarence Thomas and they're very fond of him yeah very fond of him and um and didn't I think he was the most marvelous man and so forth so I also remember circumstances where I had to really b
e um able to express my views without offense um and um uh and and really to understand that there were people who thought who saw life differently from me okay um and uh and that's that that's an example there were many examples of people associated with um with the uh the college who uh were very different in their views uh and um and I'm now actually I've just been asked by Neil Bush to serve on the Barbara Bush Foundation um which I I have agreed to do and I'm happy her literacy Foundation u
m because I'm working on literacy programs in in in Texas um so there's so many wonderful um events Mountain day oh my goodness um uh you know the pressure the pressure about when to declare R when when is it going to when is it going to be and all of that oh my goodness and um the Traditions oh the Traditions right Rally Day oh Rally Day and and the oh wow um I'll never forget that first day that I visited Smith um because you know you couldn't visit before you were appointed so so anyway the f
irst day I visited Smith and I think I have my speech that I made I might send it to the library here um and the emotion um that I felt you know coming to campus and and um talking about why I was here and what I wanted to do here and so on um I remember uh of course the debates about engineering and whether or not it was the right thing to do at College um like Smith after all um to do engineering what kind of crazy idea was that and I remember people's reaction when they said well we have no r
oom for engineering here there's no room and I said that's okay I'll put up a temporary building we and we did um and and then you know Ford came along and said they wanted to support a permanent building for um for for engineering so there's so many oh my goodness there's so many wonderful stories like that you know and I don't know if you if you read the news that it was a Smith uh engineering team of of current students and alums and a Smith Professor that um answered the challenge to come up
with a respirator that could be put together during the pandemic yes it was the Smith team that won that engineering of course yeah so that's what we knew all along right right yeah um so I know where're at Smith and that we should focus mostly on Smith but I I want to ask you also about and not only the work you did at Brown which was also groundbreaking particularly around the um call to confront Brown's Legacy and its relationship to the history of enslavement in this country um and then sub
sequently you retired for a minute and we called back into service at prayer review so could you um say a little bit for us about the work you did after Smith and where you are today and the work you're doing today uh well um I I regard it as all of a piece really um when I got to Brown you know this question of um uh of Institutions involved with the uh transatlantic slave trade was swirling and um and uh alumni asked well what is the true story were people uh were Founders at Brown involved in
the transatlantic slave train and so uh I thought well that's a fair question and somehow we should answer it um and so um I went to as many places I could to find out what the answer was it was all all um erased um and um denied by everybody that there was any connection and wasn't there that article by David horror what's that horrible article that he wrote well that was the first thing I uh confronted the the uh the ad um and uh you know I guess it was enough of a shock for people to have an
African-American uh president um of an Ivy League institution that suddenly everything that that had to do with anything uh black was had a special challenge for me but the first thing was that before I even got there uh there was an ad in the paper uh saying that African-Americans were lucky to have been enslaved uh because uh had they been left in Africa um look what their lives would be so this wonderful gentleman had put that an ad in the newspaper to say uh yeah and um and so immediately u
m the students at Brown ran around the campus uh picking up all the newspapers and destroying them uh and they got into trouble for doing that because you can't do that right um and so the campus was was in a state when I when I got there about this Hartz incident um but the rep young uh the Republicans on campus decided they wanted to invite him to campus and so then the students demanded to know what I was going to do about that uh they insisted that the invitation be blocked that he not come
to campus uh with his heinous views and so forth um and so I said well yes of course um the they are heinous views but universities don't block um you know uh opposing um opposing views and furthermore this is a campus organization and they have asked to have this speaker and if we don't allow him to speak when you have your speakers come to campus um shall I then uh pull the plug on them so we're going to have him come to campus um and so there was a lot of turmoil about it and in the end I I j
ust said um I am the descendant of slaves if I can go and sit in a room and listen to him say those things you can damn well do it too um and so he came we had that event um and uh people had a chance to uh ask him questions and so forth and uh that was it it was a that sort of disappeared after that um that was helpful to me in preparing me for the slavery um issue because um I learned if eventually that in leadership sometimes it really is all about you and who you are and what you value and w
hat you represent not in the moment when there's a crisis but the rest of the time and so uh and so I uh tried to do as Amy Gutman um uh recommends in um in talking about how leaders should project their actions uh and her point is that we shouldn't be um uh we should not be uh making decisions uh without revealing in the course of time um the ways in which we are reacting and formulating our ideas and so we should talk more about what we worry about about what we find difficult and troubling um
and the more we do that as Leaders the more people will understand that when our decisions emerge they are consequence of the agony of trying to um work through uh the um various aspects of a uh of a problem so I I tried doing that more um as a consequence of the harwitz um Affair um and so when the slavery issue came up um I decided we would get to the truth and I appointed a commission but as soon as I did that the place went wild and people from all over the country um uh really seemed to th
ink I had lost my mind including my friends and um the thing that was so remarkable about it is that everybody was very fearful about it uh not just um uh people who thought they had something to lose if we called for reparations but also blacks and so my black friends were saying you have lost your mind because you're going to make it impossible for any black person to ever become a president again because of what you're doing isn't that interesting yeah wrong um so uh so anyway so um I also re
member in in heated moments our proclivity as academics to be complex and nuanced doesn't work and so I learned to be very plain very simple um and to look for the unimpeachable um and uh and so in that regard I simply said when people uh ask what are you doing um you know why are you doing this um I always said um uh people have asked a question about our history and I think we should tell the truth about that history because if we lie as a university how can you trust anything that we teach or
anything that we do and so University should be about truth and we will tell the truth no matter what it is and I just kept saying that over and over and over again and not trying to make it very complicated um and so um we worked our way through it and of course the ridiculous thing is that since it was the worst possible thing that had ever happened uh now hundreds of places have imitated it and so forth so I I don't know I never would have thought that that would become the most famous thing
I ever did but um but certainly the the uh uh issue of um slavery and its aftermath has become uh uh still a very big issue last week I was at um at Georgetown University which followed our study and and did one of their own and they've had a remarkable uh ongoing process involved with the Jesuits trying to um uh disclose as much as they can about the history of the um the uh Catholic church and slavery um and that work is still being uncovered two weeks before I was at LSU and they're just sta
rting there slavery uh project uh there um so it's going on and before it's all done there will be hundreds of um universities and institutions that do this work based on the study that they did at Brown I did I have to ask as a Smith Alum and Smith faculty member who does work on race did the question ever come up at Smith while you were here or no subsequently it did students not to self um tell us a little bit about you re tired ostensibly you went home to Texas to to reunite with your family
and in theory to rest um but instead you answered the call to become president of uh prair riew could you tell us a little bit about that experience which you just stepped down from last year correct yeah uh well you know I have never been a fan of the way uh that we categorize uh educational institutions um the so-call elite institutions um The Not So Elite institutions um and I have tried to make it a practice to move among um educational institutions as a statement that I value education I d
on't value um the ratification of status I value education itself and so uh and so uh the reason I left Princeton to go to Spelman is because I wanted to show that the value of um a an African-American women's institution um and uh and so when they approached me I said well no I'm retired uh and I don't want to do that but uh then um they said well it's going to be a short time and I looked at those students and and I said well I value them as much as I value my students at Brown why would I why
would I say no if I had something to offer and so I think I'm still very interested in um breaking up this um this really um vile way in higher education that we allow others to do our work for us okay uh and so we don't we don't vet faculty uh we uh look for proxies for vetting them so where where were they educated where are they coming from um if they're coming from a a community college doesn't matter how good their work is um they're not going to get an appointment um at um certain institu
tions right so we are we are best at vetting work and yet we don't we're lazy we don't do that we allow other factors to um to interfere with our ability to judge um the uh ability of students uh and so forth so I was on this tear when I was uh at Brown to get all of the IV to admit more community college students and so I'd go I'd go to meetings and I'd you know make my pitch and say how how important it would be and so forth um but I they finally come around to it more now um but it took it to
ok a lot of doing to get them to say yes there are good students at community colleges and we ought to be admitting um as many of them as we can um and so uh so I think um my feeling with HBCU is that um they are an incredible resource and have been for a long time in this country uh they have not gotten their due by any means and the way that I got um involved with the Harvard project is when Harvard asked me to do uh the commencement speech uh their commencement speech a few years ago um I put
in my commencement speech that Harvard uh had benefited uh for centuries from the um the acral of wealth um while HBCU um had um uh almost often perished uh from the cruel of poverty uh and that Harvard had an obligation um as a part of the higher education Community to care about what has happened with institutions that have not had um the support they deserve so I'm still running my mouth in the same way I did you know years ago um years ago at Princeton and there's always there's always some
thing I'm trying to to fix yeah and and I guess that's you know that's why I can't retire well we appreciate it um I realize I have not given the audience an opportunity to ask any questions are there folks with a question that would like to come up to the mic as if so um we would welcome that I didn't do you want to come up to the mic Ally do you mind yeah can ask a question I'm sorry I've been I've been hogging president Simmons zel to myself so you've hinted a little bit um throughout the que
stions about the different uh missions you've taken on basically but how would you set in your tenure as an administr as an administrator has spanned decades are there any challenges you'd say particularly changed over that period in in the sense of having uh been ameliorated or or or just how would you say that some of the challenges look different now than they did when you started your career um as an administrator well I mean certainly thank you for asking that certainly don't don't you thin
k that uh today women are m in a much stronger position uh in uh universities than they were by far uh when I when I started out um and so I think that universities have dealt um to some extent um with the gender issue um I think it's not completely uh addressed because uh women are also under attack in this moment uh as leaders and people are now trying to understand what that's all about and where that's going to lead but I do think that on on the whole uh women uh have found uh much better op
portunities in higher education both on the faculty um and in uh Administration uh than they uh they had when I started when I was um uh just starting as a faculty member uh I had a I had an infant son at the time and um you know the faculty meetings would be called and you know you couldn't I couldn't find a um a sitter and so forth so I remember uh I took my son I don't know if you've ever heard this story I took my son as an infant into a faculty meeting um and um but I think that the um the
challenges of um of parenting uh have been uh better addressed um in the modern academy uh I I would say I also think that um there are certain kinds of things that simply don't exist at all anymore uh in the way people behave in the academy um and this this will surprise you perhaps because of some of the things that recently you've heard people saying in regard to the Harvard situation but um but it it used to be um a constant um uh constant uh examples of harassment and aggression against peo
ple who were different in the academy uh that was not at all unusual I think that's a baited um sign ific anly in spite of what you may see in certain high-profile instances uh I think it's just a better it's a better environment um I think that uh I was meeting uh with a group of uh new faculty at Trinity uh University uh on Friday and it was amazing to me to see them because they were all so different uh one faculty member uh was wearing one orange sneaker and one green sneaker this is the fac
ulty okay um and you know uh in the days when you had to dress a certain way you had to look a certain way uh you had to be you know you had to have certain social skills and so forth it's completely different you can be who you are fully um in even even in conservative Texas um these faculty are expressing themselves in the way that they want to express themselves and that is a that is a really fantastic change from where uh where it all started now I I can't tell you where things are going to
go with the attacks on Dei and so forth and our governor who is hellbent on um moving back turning back the clock but but right now um it's an amazing thing to see uh what is possible on these campuses because um things have changed and I think that's an actually perfect place to end it is our time I want to thank you again president Simmons for joining us I want to thank you for this beautiful book just thank you thank you thank you
Comments