President-Elect Faust at the news conference for the announcement
HSPH Dean Barry R. Bloom commented on the announcement in an email to the School: "I want to convey the congratulations of the HSPH community to Drew Gilpin Faust on her selection as the next president of Harvard University. I have had the privilege over the past several years of knowing and working with Dean Faust, who has extraordinary intellect and breadth of knowledge and who will bring her values and integrity to her new position. She cares a great deal about education and the role of Harvard in providing leadership in education at all levels. While she is a distinguished historian, she has always exhibited an interest in the science agenda of the University. I wish her well and look forward to working with her as she assumes her new role."
President-Elect Faust was elected by the members of the Harvard Corporation, with the consent of the University's Board of Overseers, after a search that began in 2006. She said in a press release, "I am a historian. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the past, and about how it shapes the future. No university in the country, perhaps the world, has as remarkable a past as Harvard's. And our shared enterprise is to make Harvard's future even more remarkable than its past. That will mean recognizing and building on what we already do well. It will also mean recognizing what we don't do as well as we should, and not being content until we find ways to do better."
President-Elect Faust is an expert on the Civil War and the American South. She was the leading figure in Radcliffe's transformation from a college into one of the country's foremost scholarly institutes. She has been a member of Harvard's Academic Advisory Group, and, in 2005, she oversaw the work of Harvard's Task Forces on Women Faculty and on Women in Science and Engineering. In 2004, she served on the Allston Task Force on Undergraduate Life.
Before coming to Harvard, President-Elect Faust was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania for 25 years.
Said James R. Houghton, the senior member of the Harvard Corporation and chair of the presidential search committee, in a press release: "This is a great day, and a historic day, for Harvard. Drew Faust is an inspiring and accomplished leader, a superb scholar, a dedicated teacher, and a wonderful human being. She combines a powerful, broad-ranging intellect with a demonstrated capacity for strong leadership and a talent for stimulating people to do their best work, both individually and together. She knows Harvard and higher education, and her interests extend to the whole of the University, across the arts and sciences and the professional domains."
Said Derek Bok, Harvard's interim president since July 1, 2006, and president from 1971 to 1991, in a press release: "Drew Faust is clearly one of the brightest stars in Harvard's firmament, as a dean, a scholar, a teacher, and a leading citizen of the University. Harvard will be the fortunate beneficiary of her wisdom, her experience, her eloquence, and her exceptional talent for academic leadership. I will do all I can to assure her a smooth transition and a running start."
Copyright, 2007, President and Fellows of Harvard College
