author portrait
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Ruth J. Simmons

Ruth J. Simmons is the former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M University, Texas’s oldest HBCU, and the former vice provost of Princeton. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Dillard University and her master’s and doctorate from Harvard in Romance languages and literatures. The president of France named her chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and President Biden named her to the White House HBCU Advisory Board. She lives in Texas.

Books

Videos from the 2024 First-Year Experience® Conference are now available

We’re pleased to share videos from the 2024 First-Year Experience® Conference. Whether you weren’t able to join us at the conference or would simply like to hear the talks again, please take a moment to view the clips below.   Penguin Random House Author Breakfast Monday, February 19th, 7:15 – 8:45 am PST This event

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FROM THE PAGE: An excerpt from Ruth J. Simmons’ Up Home

From the farmland of East Texas to Houston’s Fifth Ward to New Orleans at the dawn of the civil rights movement, Ruth J. Simmons depicts an era long gone but whose legacies of inequality we still live with today. Written in clear and timeless prose, Up Home is both an origin story set in the segregated South

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