from Uptown Magazine:
Ruth Simmons, the first black president of an Ivy League school, announced Thursday that she would be resigning at the end of the school year. She served at Brown University for 11 years.
While she was a first in Ivy League circles, she was also Brown’s first female president and the first black female president to take the top spot at a major college or university (Smith College).
In the university-wide email she states:
“I write to you in all humility to tell you of my plans to step down from the Brown presidency at the end of the current academic year and to thank you in advance for what will have been eleven deeply satisfying years at the helm of this wonderful institution. [...] I recently decided that this is the ideal time both for Brown and for me personally to begin the process of transitioning to new leadership.”
Simmons affirms that she will remain at Brown as a professor of comparative literature and Africana studies.
