Ruth Simmons was the first African American president of Brown University which she led for 11 years. Before that she was president at Smith College where she set up the first engineering programme at a women’s institution. She was recently called out of retirement to lead Prairie View A&M an historically black institution in southeast Texas. As she approaches the end of her tenure there, THE Campus editor Sara Custer interviewed her for THE Campus Live US.
Here she speaks about her pioneering work to research Brown’s historical links to slavery, the future of affirmative action, legacy admissions and how to get more people that look like her into university leadership.
Campus Talks by Times Higher Education