The Aspen Institute

Featuring Ruth Simmons, former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M University, and Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Rice University, in conversation with Aspen Institute President and CEO Dan Porterfield. Dr. Simmons discusses her 2023 memoir, “Up Home: One Girl’s Journey,” which is at once a stirring narrative of her trajectory from growing up as the twelfth child of sharecroppers in the segregated South to becoming the first Black president of an Ivy League university, and a circumstance-defying story of a girl who stretched beyond the boundaries imposed upon her—and the extraordinary people who made it all possible. Presented as part of the McCloskey Speaker Series.