Simmons To Direct Weatherhead

A scholar with an eclectic interest in international affairs will take the helm of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Beth A. Simmons, professor of government, will be the Center’s first female director starting July 1.

Simmons, currently a faculty associate and member of the executive committee at the Center, was named to the position after incumbent director Jorge I. Domínguez was appointed the University’s first vice provost for international affairs last week.

Describing his successor as someone who is open to different modes of research in social science, Domínguez said he was certain he was leaving the Center in good hands.

“She will be a splendid director, she is a one-woman walking encyclopedia of interdisciplinary social sciences,” he said.

Simmons’ 1994 book, “Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years, 1923-1939,” garnered a Political Science Association Woodrow Wilson Award. In addition to international political economy, Simmons is also interested in and teaches a course on international law. Her upcoming book on international law and human rights will be her first monographic foray outside political economy.

Domínguez said Simmons’ breadth of interests “is of course what the Weatherhead Center really needs to sustain—and she will do so, I think, with great energy and thoughtfulness,” he said.

Simmons’ affiliation with the Weatherhead Center began during her graduate student years, when she was a student associate.

In her new role, Simmons hopes the Center will retain its support of important research and increase its publicity. For students, this means the expansion of a pilot program for undergraduate research assistants.

Simmons also hopes to “rejuvenate” the Center’s Working Paper Series and increase its visibility on the web.

She also sees areas such as sociology and anthropology as underrepresented and aims to institutionalize better connections with the law school.

Although she joined the government department only in 2003, Simmons has already made an impact.

“In the few years she’s really become a mainstay colleague in the department,” said Chair of the Government Department Nancy L. Rosenblum ’69. “There’s no one who doesn’t think she’s a superb replacement for Jorge Domínguez, who is a hard act to follow.”

A picture of Simmons will one day greet those who enter the Blue Room—the Center’s main seminar room—where the photographs of her six predecessors now hang.

“It would be fine with me if they would wait until after I was done, so I didn’t have to stare at it all the time,” she said.

Having lived in the Philippines, New Zealand, and London, Simmons is a seasoned international scholar. Her favorite place in the world, however, is closer to home. “Cambridge, Massachusetts,” she answered. “If they fix the potholes.”

—Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.