A groundbreaking leader in higher education for decades, Ruth Simmons is president emerita of Prairie View A&M University, Brown University and Smith College. She is only the seventh person in Emory’s history to receive both of the university’s highest honors: the honorary degree and the President’s Medal, which she was awarded in 2006.
Simmons’ 2023 memoir, “Up Home: One Girl’s Journey,” recounts her trajectory from her birth in 1945 as the twelfth child of sharecroppers to becoming one of the nation’s preeminent educators — inspiring generations of students and faculty.
As president of Smith College from 1995 to 2001, Simmons introduced the first accredited engineering program at an all-women's college. When she left Smith to become president of Brown University, she also became the first Black president of an Ivy League institution.
Simmons led Brown from 2001 to 2012 and was named “America’s Best College President” by Time Magazine in 2001. In 2003, she appointed a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice to examine the university’s relationship to the transatlantic slave trade, which became a model for other universities. In 2011, she was the keynote speaker for Emory’s “Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies” conference.
Coming out of retirement, Simmons served as president of Prairie View A&M from 2017 to 2023 — the first woman to lead the largest HBCU in Texas. She currently serves as President’s Distinguished Fellow at Rice University and as adviser to Harvard University’s president on HBCU initiatives, among other roles.
Simmons earned her PhD from Harvard in Romance languages and literatures. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2024, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal in a White House ceremony. Last year, she was given the rank of officer in the French National Order of the Legion of Honor, one of the highest decorations bestowed by the French government.