In a long-anticipated move, Harvard confirmed the appointment of its first female president yesterday, announcing that Drew Gilpin Faust will be the university's 28th president.
Dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a civil war historian, Faust beat out a strong field of contenders for the position, including Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan '81 and the presidents of several elite universities.
Faust is the fifth woman — the fourth in the last six years — to become president of an Ivy League university. Former Penn president Judith Rodin became the first female Ivy president in 1994. She resigned in 2004 and was replaced by former Princeton provost and politics professor Amy Gutmann.
President Tilghman was appointed in 2001 and is the longest-serving current female Ivy president. Brown president Ruth Simmons, a former Princeton dean, also assumed her post in 2001.
"I am just delighted that Drew Faust will join the Ivy Presidents group," Tilghman said in an e-mail.
She said that the even balance between male and female presidents in that group did not necessarily reflect a sudden change. "I am not sure there is any deep significance to this, as women have been increasingly chosen to lead important research universities," Tilghman said. "We stand on the shoulders of giants like [former University of Chicago president] Hannah Gray and Nan Keohane, who really paved the way for this generation of women leaders."
Faust expressed a similar sentiment at a press conference on Sunday. "I'm not the woman president of Harvard," she said. "I'm the president of Harvard."
Faust's selection drew praise both from those who will work closely with her and outside observers.
"I think Drew will be an absolutely superb president — wise, humane, and visionary — and I look forward very much to working with her," Kagan said in an e-mail.
Tilghman, who first met Faust in 2000 when the latter was Radcliffe's dean, praised the selection.
"I congratulate Harvard for making a splendid choice for their [28th] president," Tilghman said in an e-mail. "She is a very distinguished historian, and will have the respect of everyone in the Harvard community. She is also a very able administrator, with the right combination of fine judgment and interpersonal skills to lead that great university."
Faust's selection ends a year's worth of speculation about who would succeed controversial president Lawrence Summers after he was forced to resign amid intense criticism of his leadership.
In January 2005, opposition to Summers crystallized around remarks suggesting that women obtained fewer high-level positions in the sciences and engineering because of a possible lack of "intrinsic" aptitude. Summers had also stirred up anger over a high-profile tiff with Cornel West GS '80, who defected to Princeton in 2002.
While Derek Bok, a former Harvard president, served as Summers' interim successor, a presidential search committee composed of members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers nominated Faust for her eventual confirmation by the full Board of Overseers.
"It was a very thorough process," presidential search committee member Nannerl Keohane said in an interview Sunday. She was the first female president of Duke and is currently a Wilson School professor. "It was not easy, but we believe that Drew Faust is a great consensus maker and [an] excellent scholar."
Some, such as Harvard professor Peter Gomes, believe there is a direct correlation between the leadership approach of a previous president and the selection of a new president.
"The conventional wisdom in the election of a Harvard president is that the Corporation nearly always elects someone who is the polar opposite of the most recent occupant of the office," Gomes wrote in an op-ed published in the Crimson last week.
Keohane said that the selection was partially conducted with Summers' tenure in mind, but the total process took many other factors into account.
"We do not only want someone who is the opposite of Lawrence Summers," Keohane said. "We were looking for someone who could continue the bold momentum that was started by Summers. We felt as though Dr. Faust is the person who can [best] continue this agenda."
Faust's nomination did not come without criticism, as some Harvard observers noted that the university's future depends on careful leadership. Concerns have been raised about how Faust will make the leap from Radcliffe, the smallest of Harvard's 10 academic units, to her new Massachusetts Hall office.
While the institute has a staff of 81, a faculty contingent of fewer than 15 and a budget of under $15 million, the university has some 25,000 employees and an annual budget that tops $3 billion. Until her move from Penn's history department to Radcliffe in 2001, Faust had not served in any senior administrative capacity.
Keohane defended the committee's selection against these criticisms, arguing that Faust's personal qualities outweighed her relative lack of experience.
"She is collegial in that she reaches out to faculty and that she cares about the future of Harvard," Keohane noted. "She has a small amount of managerial experience, but we have all confidences that she can scale up to the task."
Faust, a historian specializing in the Civil War and the American South, was formerly selected as the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute by then Harvard president and former Princeton provost Neil Rudenstine '56.
She is the first president of Harvard since 1672 without a Harvard degree. She received her undergraduate degree from the all-female Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia and earned her masters and doctoral degrees from Penn, where she studied American civilization.
Many of Faust's relatives attended Princeton, including her father, M. Tyson Gilpin '42, and two of her three brothers, M. Tyson Jr. '65 and Donald '73.
Though the long search for a new president is over, Faust will now have to begin defining herself as the president of a massive institution and outlining her plans for its future.
In her speech accepting the presidency, Faust expressed her belief that Harvard is in prime position to expand its role as a premier educational institution through many upcoming projects.
"I hope that my own appointment can be one symbol," Faust said, "of an opening of opportunities that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago."
Faust will preside over a major expansion into the nearby Allston neighborhood and the creation of a collaborative structure to fuel further scientific discovery, among other projects.
Wilson School professor, Harvard alumnus and fellow historian Stanley Katz also expressed his respect for Faust and his confidence in her leadership during this time of anticipated change.
"I have known Drew for many years ... and admire her greatly," Katz said in an e-mail. "She is very smart, superb at working with other people, calm, and has a capacious view of the role of educational institutions."
"She could not be more different from her predecessor, since I have never known her to attempt to draw attention to herself," Katz added. "She is a quiet, effective sort of person who tends to lead from behind, and has a knack of recognizing where other people are coming from while holding her own ground. A terrific choice for my alma mater!"
— Princetonian senior writer Maxwell Weidmann contributed reporting for this article.
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