 | Universities play a significant role in "demonstrating the robustness of our evolution to a just society," Brown University Ruth Simmons remarked in her campus address. |
The nation's affirmative action programs, which have been so successful in opening doors to disenfranchised populations, may be nearing a turning point in their evolution, said Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, in a talk on campus.
Simmons came to Yale on April 9 as a guest of the Chubb Fellowship of Timothy Dwight College. Her visit was also part of the University's year-long celebration of the sesquicentennial of the birth of Edward Alexander Bouchet, the first African American to graduate from Yale College (in 1874) and the first in the nation to earn a Ph.D. (a doctorate in physics, also from Yale, in 1876).
Like Bouchet, who was the son of a "body servant" to a Yale student, Simmons came from a disadvantaged background: She was the 12th child in a family of sharecroppers in eastern Texas. Unlike Bouchet, whose research career was thwarted after graduation because of the rampant discrimination of the time, Simmons went on to enjoy a highly successful career in academia, rising through the ranks to become president of Smith College and now the first African American to head an Ivy League institution.
Simmons told the audience that in her office at Brown is a portrait of the institution's first president, the Reverend James Manning, who chartered slave labor to build the university's first edifice.
"As I sit beneath his gaze," Simmons said, "I am aware of the powerful irony of my presence as one of his successors. That irony, however biting, is an unremitting comfort to me. That Brown was assuredly not founded with me in mind is reassuring to me; that its benefactors did not anticipate the presence of women is wonderfully fulfilling; that they did not imagine the descendants of slaves studying at Brown or leading Brown is decisively empowering."
This "unexpected outcome," she noted, is evidence of "the sweeping changes of time, and the fact that human beings can accomplish much over the centuries."
The loss of Bouchet's potential scientific contributions, on the other hand, demonstrates "the devastating impact of Privilege denying access to deserving people," she said.
"It is this kind of juxtaposition of one life with an incongruent other, of one time with another, that perpetually places in relief American democracy at its most confusing, its most dynamic and its enduring best," contended Simmons. "Blame the framers of the Constitution, I suppose, for creating a theoretical framework for democracy that is broad and generous enough to support all human types, all eras, all stations in life -- the straightforward inviolable principle that all men are equal by virtue of birth."
That notion of human equality encompasses both equal rights and "such necessities of life as are needed in coming times to gain and benefit from that equality," said Simmons.
"When Brown was founded, no one would have thought of education as a basic human right," she noted. Yet in today's complex world "the extent of one's capacity to earn a living, participate in governance and have a fair quality of life can be said to depend substantially on access to education."
Nevertheless, she said, some still view education as "a good to be purchased by those who have the means, or a privilege to be protected for the select few who have the ability to utilize education for 'high purpose.'"
Simmons told the audience that she finds it "incredibly distressing" that instead of appreciating the breadth and diversity of educational opportunities available, there is a "surreal expectation among millions that they should be guaranteed a place in the school of their choice."
Referring to the Supreme Court case challenging whether the University of Michigan should use race as a factor in admissions, Simmons said, "The suggestion that all attributes other than past academic achievements should be eliminated from the college admission process is, I think, an extraordinary and arbitrary demand."
Changing times call for changing admissions standards, Simmons contended. In the colonial era, administrators at institutions like Brown chose students primarily on the basis of their religious devotion, she noted, but "today one would be hard pressed to find an institution even asking what one's religious affiliation is."
To educate tomorrow's leaders, colleges and universities now must look for and cultivate a variety of attributes in their students, including "an awareness of the breadth of human strengths," she said.
Noting that affirmative action programs were originally established to address "the ubiquitous inequality and discrimination that existed against blacks," Simmons said that their effectiveness can be measured in the success many African Americans have achieved both academically and professionally.
Over the years, she pointed out, affirmative action programs have been re-interpreted and expanded to include such groups as Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, gays and lesbians, and individuals with disabilities. "The elasticity of this policy has been one of its most controversial yet, I think, most important values," said Simmons.
"Discrimination endures. That is undeniable," she asserted. "Programs like affirmative action that address both social and legal issues in a way that upholds the constitutional principle of equal rights should be kept in place. ...
"A pluralistic society simply cannot survive unless its citizens are broadly educated, broadly empowered, broadly enfranchised, and frankly hopeful that they can play a meaningful role in society," Simmons continued. "We're bound as a nation to develop policies of inclusion in all that we do in order to preserve relations among different groups. Our past has shown amply and dramatically the danger of stratifying groups by race, culture and wealth."
Simmons said she can imagine a day when some of the groups now included under affirmative action policies will no longer need protection, while new groups will.
"If affirmative action is to continue to improve on equality of society, I think it needs to evolve constantly as the profile of bigotry changes," she said. "I think we are experiencing and are nearing an important point in that continuing evolution."
For example, Simmons added, "I hope that entrenched poverty will become a more important feature of affirmative action."
Whatever the Supreme Court decides in the University of Michigan case, said Simmons, the nation's colleges and universities must "continue to find ways to educate properly through the use of diversity."
In conclusion, Simmons told the audience: "James Manning's presence and mine in the same space, separated by centuries of earnest effort to make equal rights a reality in this country, is not only telling, it should be a great comfort to all of us.
"The link between equality and the fulfillment of equal opportunity is one of the most important goals of our democracy. Universities play an increasingly dominant role in demonstrating the robustness of our evolution to a just society, and that too should be comforting to us," she said.
Prior to her Chubb Lecture, Simmons was presented with the Yale Bouchet Leadership Award in Graduate Education by Provost Susan Hockfield and Peter Salovey, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
The award cited Simmons' "courageous and committed leadership" in opening the doors of higher education to underrepresented students and her work as an "untiring role model" to women and minority students.
The citation continued: "Your steadfast commitment to equal access and equal opportunity for all who seek the challenges of life in the Academy has served as a shining example for the leaders of all institutions of higher learning. Your indomitable spirit reminds us all what one individual can accomplish if one truly cares and is committed to a moral purpose."
-- By LuAnn Bishop
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