WASHINGTON, D.C. [Brown University] — At a late-October ceremony at the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden presented Brown University President Emerita Ruth J. Simmons a prestigious National Humanities Medal.

According to a citation from the White House, Simmons was honored for pioneering equity in the U.S. higher education system and for her trailblazing presidency of Brown, where she became the first Black president of an Ivy League university.

Simmons, who served as Brown’s 18th president from 2001 to 2012, received the medal at the White House, where Biden awarded and addressed the newest recipients of the National Humanities Medal and National Medal of Arts.

“With absolute courage, you combat racial stereotypes, confront ghosts of history and speak truth to power,” Biden said to the honorees during the ceremony. 

During Simmons’ tenure at Brown, she sparked a bold initiative to uncover the University’s historical ties to racial slavery that yielded the landmark 2006 Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, which inspired universities and other organizations around the world to take up the work of investigating their own ties to slavery. Among many other outcomes, the effort at Brown led to the creation of a leading research center dedicated to the study of slavery and justice, which was renamed the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice in her honor in 2023.

Simmons 11 years as Brown president were also marked by growth in the University’s research and academic programs, major expansions in student financial aid, faculty growth, campus renewal and the completion of the $1.4 billion Boldly Brown fundraising campaign in support of Brown’s aspirations.

“You’ve all broken barriers, you’ve blazed new trails, and you’ve redefined culture,” Biden said during the ceremony. “You are the truth tellers, bridge builders, chain seekers, and above all, you are the masters of your craft that have made us a better America with all you have done.”

Simmons’ citation from the White House noted that she was one of 12 children born into a sharecropper family in Texas who went on to serve as a distinguished professor of literature and college president, “showing how an education makes one free and fearless.”

Simmons currently serves as a president’s distinguished fellow at Rice University and as a senior adviser to the president on engagement with historically Black colleges and universities at Harvard.

“At a time when the study of the humanities appears to hold less sway, I am immensely honored to be acknowledged as one who has contributed to emphasizing the importance of these critical fields,” Simmons said of the National Humanities Medal, according to a news release from Rice. “I owe my understanding of my place in the world and my optimism about the good that we can collectively achieve to the history, art, culture and philosophy that I studied. My hope is that every student could benefit from greater lifelong familiarity with and enjoyment of the humanities.”