Harvard Chooses First Woman President
A year after its president was forced to resign because of a controversial remark about gender, Harvard University is about to appoint its first woman president. The promotion of Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian, will end a 371-year-long drought of female leadership at one of the nation's oldest institutions.
A year after its president was forced to resign because of a controversial remark about gender, Harvard University is about to appoint its first woman president. The promotion of Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian, will end a 371-year-long drought of female leadership at one of the nation’s oldest institutions.
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Dr. Faust’s ascension would come a year after Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary, resigned from the post amid fierce faculty discontent. The opposition erupted in part over Dr. Summers suggestion that intrinsic aptitude could help explain why fewer women than men reach the highest ranks of science and math in universities.
Harvard’s 30-member Board of Overseers is to meet Sunday and is expected to give her final approval, according to the officials. Dr. Faust is currently dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, by far the smallest of Harvard’s schools. Much of the research sponsored by the institute, which is named after Radcliffe College, once the women’s college at Harvard, emphasizes the study of women, gender and society.
The institute is a research organization, sponsoring about 50 fellows a year, with a staff of about 80. Its budget of about $17 million a year is barely 0.5 percent of Harvard’s $3 billion annual budget. Despite her lack of experience running a large organization, Dr. Faust was apparently perceived by the nine-member search committee as an adroit administrator with considerable people skills, a valued commodity after the polarization that occurred under Dr. Summers, particularly among women on the faculty.
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