Passion, Generosity, and the Academy: Meridians Interview with Ruth J. Simmons

I NTERVI EW Passion, Generosity, and the Academy Meridians Interview with Ruth J. Simmonsµ e R ? D ? a N s : What made you want to help set up a journal like Meridians at Smith College? ruth j. simmons: I spentsometimeatSpelman College (1989-91) and while there I was very interested in the work ofSage, a publication for and about African-American women. I was also aware ofhow difficult it was to produce Sacje: difficult in the sense ofbringing together scholars on the editorial board; oftrying to persuade people institutionally to support it; oftrying to convince people that the editorial time spent on the journal was worthwhile; oftrying to identify stakeholders in the journal. I remember longing for a home for Sacje like other scholarlyjournals had, where you didn't have to worry about resources or about the legitimacy of the work being contributed. At the same time I also was acutely aware, from my days as an Associate Dean of the Faculty at Princeton, how important the issue ofvenue was, especially for scholarly work by people who were interested in issues ofrace, identity, and gender. As early as my Princeton days I filed away in my mind that it would be wonderful to create a legitimatevenue, therebyalso creating support for scholarlywork on race, gender, and identity. When Sacje came to an end some years ago, while I was President at Smith, I felt very strongly that in the bibliography ofscholarly journals, there ought to be a place for one that really focused on women ofcolor. I thought Smith College could be the home for such a venture. When we first started talking about Meridians in 1996 the response of people was "yes, but why would you have a journal that focuses on women ofcolor? It's so specialized, there aren't many people who will be [Meridians:Jèminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 42-9]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 42 interested in that." And ofcourse, when people saythat, they're notthinking that women ofcolor are the majority ofwomen in the world. So, both my experience in the tenure review process and my understanding of how difficult it was to find a home for publishing certain kinds of material meant that I knew how important it was to have the resources needed to develop a project such as Meridians. And I think, frankly, down the road, I also anticipated that it would be wonderful ifsuch a scholarly adventure would mature into a publishing enterprise for monographs on these subjects. meridians: It is clear you like to think outside the mainstream. s ? µ µ ? N s : When I was a student, I knew that my tastes, my concerns, and my interests were not mainstream and, as importantly, thattheywere also not inferior. As a result, I have always wanted to find a place in the academy where very good ideas could be supported even though they fell outside the mainstream. When I was at Princeton (1983-1989; 1991-1995), I looked for the people who couldn't get their ideas through, for those gems of whom the academy was distrustful. I tried to look beyond what I thought was the appearance ofquality to the underlying merit of ideas. I remember when I left Princeton where I was Associate Dean of the Faculty, some faculty described my role as a kind of ombudsperson. I thought that was a very odd way to describe it, but I suppose it isn't, because I aimed to be an honest broker for faculty who were innovative and had cutting-edge ideas. From myyoungestage in the academy I had the sense that the academy is extraordinarily rule-bound. By this I mean that it's easy to fall into patterns of endorsing the same kinds ofwork, vision, and scholarship that have been conducted before. Being so tightly rule-bound does not sit well for me in a place—the university—where creativity and a sense ofadventure should be forever present. For example, the issues tackled by Meridians are the issues that rule-bound academic thinking does not encourage. I think that what I fight for is the capacity ofthe academy to be...