Radcliffe Day 2026: Honoring Dr. Ruth Simmons

John Palfrey, May 29, 2026, Cambridge, MA, USA

Thank you, Dean Brown-Nagin, and all Radcliffe Institute staff for putting on such a wonderful day for us all. Thank you for the invitation to moderate this panel on leadership. Thank you most of all for the chance to be among the many, many people who have traveled here, from near and far, to honor the 2026 Radcliffe Medalist, Dr. Ruth Simmons.

In sports, talk radio jocks will refer to a very special athlete and team leader as a “franchise player.” As in, Caitlin Clark is a franchise player for the Indiana Fever.

In politics, there’s a phrase that journalists use to describe an unusual talent that comes along only once in a while: that person is a “generational talent.” As in, Barack Obama is a “generational talent.”

I’m not so sure in academia that we have such a phrase. President Garber, Provost Manning, Dean Minow, do we? I can’t think of one. We don’t really have a phrase in academia like “franchise player” or “generational talent.”

But you know what we do have in academia? We have Dr. Ruth Simmons.

—

There are many words and phrases that would aptly describe Dr. Simmons—a scholar of Romance language and literature, by the way, so one is inspired to choose with care one’s words to describe her! Dr. Simmons, this year’s Radcliffe Medalist, is what the kids today would call an “icon” in the professional worlds that I inhabit: academia, philanthropy, and civil rights.

She has been many “firsts” along the way, as I am certain we will hear described throughout the day. She is a bona fide trail blazer.

I can also add a descriptive phrase of my own, from seeing Dr. Simmons up close in a Board room. One great privilege of being a foundation president has been to work with an extraordinary Board of Directors at MacArthur Foundation, many of whom, past and present, join me here today to honor Dr. Simmons.

The phrase that I would add is that she is a deeply wise and kind person. She is in fact unlike any Board member I have ever witnessed. How so? I believe that she is likely, in any Board meeting, to be the person who speaks the least often and to whom people listen the most closely. It is something I’ve never quite seen before. It is something to behold—and something from which every one of us can learn.

—

Inspired by Dr. Simmons and her work and legacy, his panel is about the special kinds of leadership that we need in all our communities today.

We are extremely fortunate today to be joined by four exceptional leaders, each from a field of work and mode of activation that enables them to speak to the leadership legacy of Dr. Simmons.

We are joined by Paula A. Johnson, by training a cardiologist, currently serving as the 14^th President of Wellesley College; Raphael Bostic, a leading economist who has recently retired as President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Deborah Borda, who served as the President of the New York Philharmonic and guided that institution through both the pandemic and major building projects; and Val Ackerman, the Commissioner of the Big East Athletic Conference – who recently announced she will step down from her role in August.