Harvard names first woman president

[shawmut]

By JESSE HARLAN ALDERMAN, Associated Press Writer


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Harvard University named historian Drew Gilpin Faust as its first female president on Sunday, ending a lengthy and secretive search to find a successor to Lawrence Summers and his tumultuous five-year tenure.

The seven-member Harvard Corporation elected Faust, a noted scholar of the American South and dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, as the university's 28th president. The board of overseers recommended her for the post. She was chosen after a search in which a number of potential candidates said they were not interested in the job.

"This is a great day, and a historic day, for Harvard," James R. Houghton, chairman of the presidential search committee, said in a statement. "Drew Faust is an inspiring and accomplished leader, a superb scholar, a dedicated teacher, and a wonderful human being."

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Some professors have quietly groused that — despite the growing centrality of scientific research to Harvard's budget — the 371-year-old university is appointing a fifth consecutive president who is not a scientist. No scientist has had the top job since James Bryant Conant retired in 1953; its last four have come the fields of classics, law, literature and economics.

Faust is the first Harvard president who did not receive an undergraduate or graduate degree from the university since Charles Chauncy, an alumnus of Cambridge University in England, who died in office in 1672. She attended Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pennsylvania, where she was also professor of history.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070211/ap_on_re_us/harvard_president

[Turbineguy]

1. OMG! A W-O-M-A-N?

It's the end of the world as we know it.

They'd better start advertizing their MBA program based on the fact that Dubya went there.

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[USA No. 1]

2. YOU GO GIRL!!!!!

[aquart]

3. She has the single most important requirement for a university president.

Three last names.

[kath]

4. Heh - in several of Calvin Trillin's columns, he jokes about the "three last names"

thing among the wealthy, and writes about a character named Thatcher Baxter Hatcher.

[aquart]

5. Yep. Still true, it seems.

[intheflow]

6. That's worth a K&R.

Gotta celebrate when the glass ceiling breaks. :toast:

[Runcible Spoon]

7. I hope she does well.

although I wouldn't put it past Harvard to choose a woman to shield itself from criticism from the controversy over that pig Lawrence Summes :grr: