Harvard hires first female president in school’s history

Harvard University is about to name its first woman president since its founding in 1636, tapping a Civil War historian to succeed Lawrence Summers, whose tumultuous tenure was marked by controversial remarks about women and clashes with faculty members.

Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a leading historian on the American South, will be formally appointed president as early as this weekend, according to a source with knowledge of the decision.

With Faust’s selection, half of the eight Ivy League schools will be run by women: Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University and Brown University.

Faust, a popular figure on campus known for her collegiality, will succeed the blunt Summers, an economist and former U.S. treasury secretary whose combative five-year tenure as president ended last year. His departure followed a faculty revolt fueled by criticism after he suggested that the shortage of elite female scientists may stem in part from “innate” differences between men and women.

Faust’s selection as president comes as Harvard moves to modernize its more than 30-year-old undergraduate curriculum, a step that is being closely watched by other schools and that could serve as a model for U.S. higher education.

Faust faces big challenges, including keeping up the frantic pace of fundraising that helped Harvard increase its endowment to $29.2 billion in 2006 – more than the gross national product of many nations.

She also must work with the university’s many strong schools and colleges that are famously decentralized; indeed, the powerful faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences drove the opposition to Summers.

Faust will end the succession of 27 white men who have held the president’s title at America’s oldest institution of higher education.