Harvard expected to name Faust first woman president

Harvard is expected to name Drew Gilpin Faust its 28th president this weekend, marking the first time in its 371-year history that the nation's oldest university will be led by a woman, according to two reports last night.

The Harvard Corporation, the university's main governing body, has settled on its choice and will recommend Faust to the school's alumni board of overseers for approval on Sunday, The Harvard Crimson and the Boston Globe reported last night.

The overseers are expected to make an announcement the same day, the Globe reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. Spokesmen for Harvard and Faust declined to comment.

If Faust, the current dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is confirmed for the job, it would be the first time that half of the Ivy League's eight colleges are led by women. In addition to President Tilghman, Amy Gutmann and Ruth Simmons — both former Princeton officials — lead the University of Pennsylvania and Brown, respectively.

Though considered a leading candidate since the beginning of the presidential search, Faust has beaten out other strong contenders, including Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan '81. Tilghman and Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 had also been mentioned, but were never seen as serious candidates.

In an editorial published this morning, the Crimson struck a cautious note on Faust's appointment, arguing that while her ascension would "spark a flurry of attention" worldwide, the college's new leader takes the helm at a time when Harvard is "in dire need of reform."

"The new president cannot afford to sit idle while undergraduate education slides into confusion under the watch of an indecisive Faculty," the Crimson said, adding that Faust will have to establish her credentials as a consensus-builder if she is to succeed in leading the heavily decentralized institution.

"If we, as observers of Harvard University, learned anything from the rapid downfall of former University President Summers, it is that no man — now, no person — can push Harvard in his or her own direction as its leader."

Concerns, however, have already 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 to Radcliffe in 2001, Faust had not served in any senior administrative capacity.

A scholar of 19th-century American history, Faust has long been rumored as a top choice for the Harvard presidency. She has been credited with leading efforts to bolster the number of women scientists at Harvard as the head of a task force set up by the school's former president Lawrence Summers in the aftermath of controversial remarks he made about women in science.

Final approval of Faust's appointment on Sunday would end a year's worth of speculation about who would succeed the controversial Summers after he was forced to resign in the face of intense criticism of his leadership.

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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.

Some observers have suggested that Faust's markedly different approach to leadership from her predecessor's may be a key reason for her appointment.

"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," Harvard professor Peter Gomes wrote in an op-ed published in the Crimson last week.

"This has led to the speculation that a consensus-building female scientist" — in contrast to the often-abrasive and heavy-handed economist Summers — "is the ideal candidate for the job, although no one resembling that description has yet surfaced on the many circulating lists of possible candidates."

Reports, however, have indicated out that while some Harvard Corporation members — including Princeton professor Nan Keohane — were set on awarding a woman the job, other corporation members had no set preferences for a woman or a scientist.

"She's terrifically qualified, and they chose her because she's the best person for the job," Sheldon Hackney, a former Penn president and Princeton provost, told the Crimson.

Faust is the first president of Harvard since 1672 without a degree from that school. 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.

Besides Kagan, other candidates on the presidential short list included Harvard provost Steven Hyman and Thomas Cech, a Nobel laureate and president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. After Cech publicly withdrew his name from consideration Jan. 31, several reports indicated that Faust was left as the sole front-runner.

Faust's name was first mentioned in connection with an Ivy League presidency when Penn was looking for its next leader in 2003, just two years after she left that school to take her present job at Harvard. Faust, who received her masters and doctoral degrees from Penn, denied interest in that job, which eventually went to then-Princeton provost Gutmann.