A new face in the ivory tower

Black Enterprise, Oct, 1995 by Caroline V. Clarke

ON SEPTEMBER 30, ACADEMIC LEADERS FROM across the country will gather in Northampton, Mass., as Ruth J. Simmons is installed as the ninth president of Smith College. The ceremony will bear a striking similarity to Smith's inaugurations of years gone by. Backdropped by the vibrant fall foliage of the Berkshire mountains, it will feature plenty of pomp and circumstance and heartfelt speeches about Smith's mission as one of the nation's few remaining colleges for women.

But in a subtle--yet no less striking way--this inauguration will be different. For one, there are sure to be more African Americans present. And there will also be more press. Because Simmons, unlike her predecessors at Smith or at any of America's top-tier academic institutions, is black. And that makes this inauguration news.

"I can't tell you how elated I am about this appointment," says Frank L. Matthews, publisher of Black Issues In Higher Education. "This is a watershed event. Smith is a premiere institution, considered to be among the best in the world. If she succeeds, this will resonate very positively throughout the Ivy League and the academic community generally."

There are currently 28 black presidents of predominantly white four-year colleges in the U.S., according to Deborah Carter of the American Council on Education in Washington. The significance of those breakthroughs should not be minimized.

But, with one exception, the nation's top colleges--its most universally respected and most wealthy have not offered a CEO slot to an African American. Clifton Wharton, who served as Michigan State University's president in the '70s, is the exception. Although he went on to become chancellor of the 64-campus State University of New York and then CEO of the world's largest pension fund, TIAA-CREF, his breakthrough 1970 appointment at Michigan State was not duplicated at any of the nation's major research universities or elite liberal arts colleges. At least, not until now.

Why? There are many reasons, and surely each school has its own. But what they all have in common is money, lots of it. And a constant need to attract more. That's the CEO's job, along with innumerable other responsibilities that go with running a major institution (Smith has an endowment of $473 million and an annual operating budget of $117.2 million). The fear, explains Matthews, is that African Americans won't have the connections or the appeal that keeps the money rolling in. Particularly at conservative institutions like Smith, one has to wonder how deep-pocketed alums (who contributed $14,625,768 to the college in 1993) will react to a black president (both Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan attended Smith). And so, the December announcement of Simmons' appointment was an eye-popper.

A MULTIFACETED CHALLENGE

It's easy to see why Ruth Simmons was tapped for the job. She has incredible presence, tempered by a soothing warmth and easy laugh. At 50, she is exuberant, focused and reflective. And she is confident enough to generally speak her mind. Luckily, she has a gift for saying in a perfectly palatable way things that might otherwise raise a few eyebrows.

For someone who has always fashioned herself "a worker-bee," Simmons has quickly and gracefully adapted to the glare of the spotlight. And, perhaps better than anyone, she understands that long after the inauguration festivities end, many will still be watching her. But while the attention thus far has been almost dreamlike in its positiveness, Simmons knows what's waiting around the bend--and it won't all be good. If she's lucky, the honeymoon will last through her first year. But, she says, "By the time I get to year two, I will have to grapple with real problems and make unpopular decisions. The issue of my being black will be gone and all the other issues will rise to the fore. Those are the ones I'll be judged on."

At Smith, those issues are multifaceted and many. They include the challenges all college CEOs face today: how to attract and retain a renowned, diverse and caring faculty; how to adapt an aging physical plant to the demands of state-of-the-art equipment; how to balance the enormous cost of providing a high-quality education against the desire to provide financial assistance to those in need (this year's tuition and room and board: $26,484); and, of course, how to draw the proverbial best and brightest students--only women need apply. Which brings us to the trickier issues...

The viability of single-sex education, and the education of women in particular, has been the subject of widespread, emotional debate for decades. But when the all-male Ivy League opened to women in the early '70s, things heated up for the Seven Sister schools, including Smith. As the daughters of women who had graduated from Radcliffe, Barnard and Smith chose to enter Harvard, Columbia and Yale, application and enrollment numbers at women's colleges began to slide. Smith was no exception. By the late '80s, there were faculty concerns that in the battle to maintain its all-women status, Smith was compromising on student quality. As time went on, some instructors became increasingly vocal about it. Needless to say, students were outraged.