There was a time when big-league university presidents really mattered. The New York Times covered their every move. Presidents， the real ones， sought their counsel. For Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower， being head of Princeton and Columbia， respectively， was a stepping-stone to the White House. Today， though， the job of college president is less and less removed from that of the Avon lady (except the house calls are made to the doorsteps of wealthy alums)。

Ruth Simmons， the newly installed president of Brown University and the first African American to lead an Ivy League school， is a throwback to the crusading campus leaders of old. She doesn’t merely marshal funds; she invests them in the great educational causes of our day. With the more than $300 million she raised as president of Smith College from 1995 to 2001， Simmons established an engineering program (the first at any women’s school) and added seminars focused on public speaking to purge the ubiquitous “likes” and “ums” from the campus idiom. At a meeting to discuss the future of Smith’s math department， one professor timidly requested two more discussion sections for his course. Her response： “Dream bigger.”

Her own dream was born in a sharecropper’s shack in East Texas where there was no money for books or toys——she and her 11 siblings each got an apple， an orange and 10 nuts for Christmas. Though she was called on her walk to school， entering the classroom， she says， “was like waking up.” When Simmons won a scholarship to Dillard University， her high school teachers took up a collection so she’d have a coat. She went on to Harvard to earn a Ph.D. in Romance languages.

Simmons has made diversity her No. 1 campus crusade. She nearly doubled the enrollment of black freshmen at Smith， largely by traveling to high schools in the nation’s poorest ZIP codes to recruit. Concerned with the lives of minority students once they arrive at school， she has fought to ease the racial standoffs that plague so many campuses. At Smith she turned down a request by students to have race-specific dorms. In 1993， while vice provost at Princeton， she wrote a now famous report recommending that the university establish an office of conflict resolution to defuse racial misunderstandings before they boiled over.

Her first task at Brown will be to heal one such rupture last spring after the student paper published an incendiary ad by conservative polemicist David Horowitz arguing that blacks economically benefited from slavery. “There’s no safe ground for anybody in race relations， but campuses， unlike any other institution in our society， provide the opportunity to cross racial lines，” says Simmons. “And even if you’re hurt， you can’t walk away. You have to walk over that line.”

注(1)：本文选自Time; 9/17/2001， Vol. 158 Issue 12， p70， 1p， 1c

注(2)：本文习题命题模仿对象2004年真题text 2.

1. What does the author intend to illustrate with the example of Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower?

[A]The president of the first-class university was really very important.

[B]The presidents gave them some good advice.

[C]The presidents of the university could easily go to the white house.

[D]The presidents had more power and authority than Avon ladies.

2. What can we infer from the second paragraph?

[A]Simmons was an old crusading campus leader.

[B]Simmons wanted to expand her university.

[C]Simmons knew well about how to invest the money.

[D]Simmons was a competent and ambitious president.

3. The 4th paragraph mainly talks about _________.

[A]Simmons greatly sympathized the black people.

[B]Simmons wanted to diversify her university.

[C]Simmons made a great effort to solve the racial problems.

[D]Simmons never neglect the racial problems.

4. What does the author mean by “the job of college president is less and less removed from that of the Avon lady”(Line 4， Paragraph 1)?

[A]College president can get their position with the help of Avon lady.

[B]The jobs of college president and Avon lady are quite similar.

[C]College presidents got inspiration from the job of the Avon lady.

[D]The jobs of college presidents and the Avon lady should be separated.

5. Which of the following is true according to the text?

[A]Simmons had successfully solved the racial problems.

[B]Simmons owed her success to her high school teachers.

[C]Simmons didn’t like “likes” and “ums” in campus idioms.

[D]Simmons asked her professor to be more ambitious and aggressive.

答案：ADCBD