While a debate rages in the comments section of “A Harvard Student (re)Considers Ibanking,” below, here’s something about another university president.

The Times has a “Corner Office” interview with Ruth Simmons, who is stepping down as president of Brown next year.

Q. What do you consider some of your most important leadership lessons?

A. I had some bad experiences, and I don’t think we can say enough in leadership about what bad experiences contribute to our learning.

Unfortunately, Simmons proceeds to not say very much at all about what those bad experiences are.

Q: Can you elaborate?

A. I worked for someone who did not support me. And it was a very painful experience, and in many ways a defining experience for me. So having a bad supervisor really probably started me thinking about what I would want to be as a supervisor.

That sounds really bad. I guess it was a lot worse than the heated criticism Simmons took for making $550, 000 a year serving on the boards of Texas Instruments and Goldman Sachs, where she voted in support of $17 billion in bonuses in 2009.

As one Brown student noted,

Simmons was, through her seat on the Compensation Committee at Goldman, directly tied to one of the most shameful and embarrassing business decisions in memory…we students need to start thinking about whether she’s lived up to the de facto canonization we’ve thoughtlessly, almost instinctively, bestowed upon her.

For some reason—speaking of de facto canonization—the Times didn’t ask Simmons about Goldman. I wonder if Simmons only agreed to cooperate on the condition that she not be asked about it?

I have never been able to understand the adulation—and kid gloves—with which Simmons is widely treated. I have always found her to be cynically disingenuous, as when she insisted that the controversy over Goldman had nothing to do with her decision to resign from the board. Instead, she said, serving on Goldman’s board was taking up too much of her time. It had been taking up that much of her time for 10 years at that point.

I remember laughing (but crying inside) at Simmon’s defense of her work at Goldman and its billions in bonuses (which, to be fair, she told to the Times):

“There are going to be lots of books written. I think people will make their own decisions,” Dr. Simmons said. “It’s easy to look back and say, ‘Gee, that was a lot,’ but you have to look forward and see how people react.”

Inspiring words from a university president.

Here’s a more thoughtful and balanced piece, written by another Brown student, about Simmons’ legacy. How many corporate boards will she rejoin, and how quickly, once she is no longer president?