<p><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/</a></p>
<p>Radcliffe Institute Dean Drew Gilpin Faust</p>
<p>What's the big deal if it is a women?</p>
<p>First woman president at the most famous institute of higher learning in the world?
I don't know, you tell me.</p>
<p>From the Crimson:</p>
<p>"Drew Gilpin Faust, a Civil War scholar, will tackle a “reconstruction” of her own as the new president of Harvard—bringing the University back together after the tumultuous tenure of Lawrence H. Summers. </p>
<p>Faust, whose selection still needs to be confirmed by the Board of Overseers in a meeting on Sunday, has served as dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study since 2001, leading its transformation from a college for women into an institute for advanced study in a wide range of disciplines. </p>
<p>At the institute, Faust oversees 81 staff members, fewer than 15 faculty members, and a budget of about $16 million. As president, she would oversee a budget of about $3 billion and almost 25,000 employees, fueling questions about how she will handle such a leap. </p>
<p>The choice of Faust, a historian specializing in the American South and the Civil War, signifies a return to the leadership of a career academic. Neil L. Rudenstine, the English scholar who led Harvard through the 1990s, was the last such academic at the helm of the University. Faust’s predecessor, Summers, was a nationally known political figure, having served as secretary of the Treasury. </p>
<p>If she is confirmed by the Board of Overseers, many say Faust will bring a style of leadership starkly different from Summers’ supposed abrasiveness. Summers resigned last spring after a series of bruising public confrontations with members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. </p>
<p>“If there are going to be problems they are certainly not going to be the same kind of problems,” Lynn Hunt, a professor of history at UCLA and a former colleague of Faust at Penn, said last month...."</p>
<p>My interviewer told me she's all for stem-cell research.</p>
<p>Yay!</p>
<p>(I'm not really committed to one side of the argument or the other regarding this issue, but I am glad to know that, in general, Faust is likely to give science-oriented students their freedom in education.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
First woman president at the most famous institute of higher learning in the world?
I don't know, you tell me.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So what if the president was a women or black or asian. Why must society constantly divide us? For example, at MIT recently a black professor was denied tenure. It was shown on yahoo front page news yesterday I believe. Why must his race be related to gaining tenure? Why bring it up? Again why does the media have to constantly bring race or gender into the equation. </p>
<p>Congrats to her if she is qualified. If the reason she got it was because of politics then I don't agree with it.</p>
<p>"Congrats to her if she is qualified.:"</p>
<p>An example of why gender, race are important in our society.</p>
<p>Hard to imagine that anyone would think that Harvard would pick an unqualified person for political reasons. Sheesh....</p>
<p>Hard to believe, too, that someone is so out of it that they don't understand the importance of Harvard -- the world's top university -- apparently for the first time selecting a woman president.</p>
<p>I guess that if Hillary Clinton becomes U.S.'s first woman president, VTjas81 wouldn't think that it would be appropriate to mention her gender in stories or to say that the U.S.'s electing a woman was of important significance.</p>
<p>When I went to Harvard back, Harvard deliberately restricted women to being only 1/4 of the undergraduate student body. As a result, the female students were far more qualified than were the males. In other words: males were deliberately accepted who were less qualified than were females.</p>
<p>Add to that, those same highly qualified women had a harder time getting into graduate and professional schools or corporate and executive careers than did less qualified men. It even was legal in help wanted ads to list jobs by gender. Secretarial and nursing jobs were listed as being for women. Corporate, sales (except for at women's stores), law and other jobs were legally listed as being for men.</p>
<p>At the time, that was perfectly legal as was rejecting women from law and medical schools or from corporate jobs and college professorships and presidencies simply because they were female. Heck, it even was hard for highly qualified women to become presidents at women's colleges!</p>
<p>Fortunately, those days of legally rejecting qualified people because of gender are over. </p>
<p>However, as a result of the long history of legally confining highly qualified women to only certain fields and low status jobs including at places like Harvard, it is a very big deal if indeed Harvard has selected a woman as president.</p>
<p>Based on what I know about women who rise to such positions in organizations that in the past had been biased toward men, I would bet that Drew Faust is far more qualified and had to jump through far more hoops than any male did who was a Harvard president. Whatever she has achieved, she achieved by beating the odds that were stacked against her, not because people opened doors wide for her like they do for white males. And she certainly wouldn't have had a network of good ole boys who were providing her with inside info and contacts.</p>
<p>A short response to the above statement since I must go. I didn't say anything about her qualifications and being female. I was just saying there are a lot of politics behind the scenes. I don't doubt a female is capable of being president so don't jump down my throat.</p>
<p>The concern is that she was chosen because she's perceived to be Summers' polar opposite: a concillatory figure who'll stay the course and avoid pushing the faculty. Summers went about things the wrong way, but he did have a point when he tried to implement some needed changes that they balked at (contrary to what some may believe, his remarks about women were a convenient excuse to nail him, not the cause) . She'll probably end up being more of a Rudenstine type figure.</p>
<p>If she ends up being like Rudenstine, fine with me. I thought he was a great president.</p>
<p>Even though Princeton is headed by a woman, and has been for a few years, I still felt a rush when I read this article. Wow. What makes this a bit different (and more striking) to me is not just that this is Harvard, but that she is a humanities scholar. It seems that women scientists or engineers (hard science types) have been slowly awarded more respect, as if they are OK because they have proven their intellectual rigor through their scientific backgrounds.</p>
<p>They may have chosen her for her diplomatic and
negotiating ability- which doesn't necessarily translate into "concillatory", imo.
Strong leaders know how to get people to come along with their ideas, rather than dictating from the top.</p>
<p>And NSM, I have you beat, in that when I graduated high school, women were not even allowed to apply. So yeah, it's a big deal. :)</p>
<p>Maybe people like Northstarmom and A.S.A.P. simply want younger people (my presumption about VTjas81) to understand a history of struggle for the rights of (fill in your blank) ... women. Blacks. Jews. the disabled...in (fill in your blank)...the military. higher education. lower education. employment. housing...</p>
<p>As for VTjas81 "Why does the media have to constantly bring race and gender into the equation?" you may be angry at the messenger (the media). Race and gender are in the equation in every encounter I have each day. Sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. It's part of human identity.
But not an excuse to violate one's rights to equal opportunities in the United States.
So I am VERY excited and enthused to hear that Harvard will have a woman president. Leadership is now understood to mean the skillset that A.S.A.P. described ("getting people to come along with your ideas rather than dictating from the top"). Both are used, in some measure by every leader, but if she has a new balance for those two, then it might be a different response from Harvard faculty. Most faculty types are independent cusses, aren't they? So some diplomacy is needed in large measure.
(P.S. I'm an Oberlin alum, America's first coeducational college, so we always had men and women. Also it was the first college to admit Blacks, first being runaway slaves. The history of an institution means a lot to its students, and sometimes to the nation. So, rock on, Harvard.)</p>
<p>Well...good for Harvard, even though women have held the exec position at other highly ranked universities in the United States for years (Duke and Michigan, for example)</p>
<p>
[quote]
For example, at MIT recently a black professor was denied tenure. It was shown on yahoo front page news yesterday I believe. Why must his race be related to gaining tenure? Why bring it up? Again why does the media have to constantly bring race or gender into the equation.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>His race is an issue because he made it an issue.</p>
<p>Wow! I didn't realize that Princeton's president also is a woman. Times really have changed. I can now see how VTjas81 didn't realize why Harvard's getting a women as president would be seen by many as a very big deal.</p>
<p>When I applied to college, Princeton didn't even accept women!</p>
<p>It is amazing to me to realize that if Faust becomes president, the majority of Ivy League presidents will be female. How times have changed!</p>
<p>I can not emphasize more how exciting that is to me and to other middle aged women who remember how many doors used to be totally closed to women, no matter how spectacular their stats and other achievements were. It wasn't until a year before I entered Harvard that women were allowed to use Lamont Library, the main library in Harvard Yard!</p>
<p>During my 4 years at Harvard, I didn't have one female professor. The only female who taught me was a woman who was an instructor, and who didn't get tenure.</p>
<p>When one of my best friends (another Harvard grad) applied for a surgery residency in the 1980s, she was told during her interview (at a state medical schoo where she was graduating near at the top of her class), "You have just 2 strikes against you. You are black and female."</p>
<p>The female Ivy presidents are:</p>
<p>Princeton's prez is Dr. Shirley M. Tilghman , who assumed office on June 15, 2001.. Her field is molecular biology.</p>
<p>University of Penn.'s prez is: Dr. Amy Gutmann, a political scientists and philosopher who took the helm in 2004.</p>
<p>Brown University's president is: Dr. Ruth Simmons, whose field is romance languages and literature and who also was the first African American president of an Ivy. I have read that she was a finalist for the Harvard presidency that apparently Faust got.</p>
<p>Feenotype is right and they're doing a good job relative to the challenges they face., ie. UMichigan AA issues. With Summers blunders I'm not surprised with Harvard's decision.</p>
<p>Damage control</p>
<p>Of course it's a huge deal that she's the first woman president of Harvard.</p>
<p>Wouldn't it be a big deal if the U.S. elected a woman president for the first time.</p>
<p>You're talking about two institutions -- political and educational -- where women were excluded for many, many years.</p>
<p>And let's not forget Susan Hockfield at MIT. Not Ivy but just as or even more prestigious.</p>
<p>Heartfelt congratulations to the new president of Harvard. This is an amazing day in history. She is a thoughtful leader and a wonderful role model for women. I am hopeful she will follow the lead of President Tilghman at Princeton who has managed to ease out the old boy network at Princeton. Much to the surprise of the once noisy male alumni she has brought in the dollars from women and LGBT donors. Tilghman ignored Old Boy protestations about her new feminist direction at Princeton. Diversity and LGBT programs are her first concern in finally pushing Princeton where it should be. Her programs already underway and I couldnt be happier about it.
<a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/archive...ws/16027.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://dailyprincetonian.com/archive...ws/16027.shtml</a>
<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/lgbt/%5B/url%5D">http://www.princeton.edu/lgbt/</a></p>
<p>I have listed these links elsewhere on the board hoping women will be encouraged to apply in huge numbers to Princeton and Harvard. Remember women now hold the presidencies and majority Dean positions throughout the Ivy League! It is no coincidence and its about time! The Old Boy Network is gone for good as I keep saying. Hillary is next!</p>