Former Penn prof Harvard's newest president

Former Penn professor Drew Gilpin Faust was selected as Harvard University's next president yesterday, making her the first female president in the school's 371-year history.

Currently the dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Faust was a History professor at Penn from 1975 to 2000, specializing in the Civil War. She was also named Director of Penn's Women's Studies program in 1996.

Faust will assume Harvard's presidency in July, ending a year-long search to fill the vacancy that resulted from former president Lawrence Summers's resignation in June 2006 after a second vote of no-confidence from Harvard's faculty.

"I am deeply grateful for the trust the governing boards have placed in me," Faust said during a press conference yesterday. "I will work with all my heart, together with people across Harvard, to reward that trust."

Faust becomes the fourth female standing president in the Ivy League, joining the ranks of Ruth Simmons of Brown, Shirley Tilghman of Princeton and Penn's Amy Gutmann.

"You can think of that as a clear tipping point," Gutmann said. "I think it's a clear sign that there is more opportunity at the top for women."

As Harvard's next president, Faust will oversee the school's expansion across the Charles River into Allston and the redesign of its undergraduate curriculum.

But as the successor to Summers, Faust will have to deal with another challenge - bridging the gap between faculty and administrators that was exacerbated by Summers' remarks in 2005 that men have more "intrinsic aptitude" than women in the sciences.

Colleagues and friends say that Faust's knack for building consensus will be a boon at a university known for its stubbornly independent deans and professors.

"The deans of the different schools are very powerful, so the president has to find a way to make them all play nicely together," said Harvard law professor Bruce Mann, who taught alongside Faust at Penn. "Summers thought you could do that by bullying people, and that is not how Drew Faust will lead."

Mann added that Faust's tenure at Radcliffe, where she transformed the former women's college into a leading research institute, will help her as the university expands westward.

As dean, Faust worked to focus Radcliffe's multidisciplinary projects around the themes of gender and society, bringing together scientists, writers and historians, something that Mann said will help her guide the development of the new, science-focused campus.

"Coming from Radcliffe, which has become this sort of cross-disciplinary research place, she probably has decent relationships across the various schools," former Penn president Sheldon Hackney said.

"She's strong and will get Harvard working together and working in one direction," he added.

But Faust's background does raise some questions about her ability to lead a large research institution.

Unlike Summers - who served as the U.S. Secretary of Treasury before leading Harvard - Faust has spent much of her career as an academic.

It was only in 2001 that she became the dean of the Radcliffe Institute, a research center whose budget of $16 million pales in comparison with that of Harvard's $3 billion budget.

But professors say that Faust's experience as both a researcher and a teacher play to her advantage.

"Once people see Drew in a leadership position, whatever doubts they have are going to evaporate," Penn History professor Steven Hahn said.

Harvard junior Shelly Agarwal said she hoped that Faust was selected on the basis of her academic credentials, rather than as a response to the issues surrounding Summers, but added that having a female in Harvard's top position for the first time is a step in the right direction.

"I think that that is a good signal now that we have a woman president especially after [Summers'] comments," she said.

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