Drew Gilpin Faust

Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust
Faust in 2011
28th President of Harvard University
Incumbent
Assumed office July 1, 2007
Preceded by	Lawrence Summers Derek Bok (acting)
Personal details
Born	September 18, 1947 (1947-09-18) (age 64) New York, New York
Spouse(s)	Charles E. Rosenberg
Children	Jessica Rosenberg, Leah Rosenberg
Residence	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Alma mater	Bryn Mawr College University of Pennsylvania
Profession	Professor
Website	Office of the President

Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947)^[1] is an American historian, college administrator, and the president of Harvard University.^[2] Faust is the first woman to serve as Harvard's president and the university's 28th president overall. Faust is the fifth woman to serve as president of an Ivy League university, and the former dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Faust is also Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard.^[3][4]

Early life and career

Faust was born in New York City and raised in Clarke County, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley.^[1] She is the daughter of Catharine Mellick and McGhee Tyson Gilpin, a Princeton graduate and breeder of thoroughbred horses.^[5] Faust comes from a well-connected family of business and political leaders.^{[citation needed]} Her great-grandfather, Lawrence Tyson, was a U. S. Senator from Tennessee during the 1920s. The family arrived in Clarke County at the turn of the 20th century.^[6] Faust is a descendant of the Puritan divine Rev. Jonathan Edwards, the third president of Princeton.^[7]

Graduating from Concord Academy, Concord, Massachusetts, in 1964, she earned her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College, A.M. and Ph.D. in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania in 1975. In the same year, she joined the Penn faculty as assistant professor of American civilization. Based on her research and teaching, she rose to Walter Annenberg Professor of History. A specialist in the history of the South in the antebellum period and Civil War, Faust developed new perspectives in intellectual history of the antebellum South and in the changing roles of women during the Civil War. She is the author of six books, including Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, for which she won both the Society of American Historians Francis Parkman Prize and the Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians in 1997. Faust’s most recent book, This Republic of Suffering (2008), was a critically acclaimed examination of how America’s understanding of death was shaped by the Civil War and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. [see awards below]

In 2001, Faust was appointed the first dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the successor to Radcliffe College.^[1] She is a trustee of Bryn Mawr College, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. She serves on the educational advisory board of the Guggenheim Foundation.

Appointment as President of Harvard University

On February 8, 2007, The Harvard Crimson announced that Faust had been selected as the next president.^[8] Following formal approval by the university's governing boards, her appointment was made official three days later.^[9]

Her appointment followed the departure of Lawrence H. Summers who resigned on June 30, 2006, after a series of controversial statements that led to mounting criticism from members of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Derek Bok, who had served as President of Harvard from 1971–1991, returned to serve as an interim president during the 2006-2007 academic year.

Preparations for inauguration of Faust

During a press conference on campus Faust stated, "I hope that my own appointment can be one symbol of an opening of opportunities that would have been inconceivable even a generation ago". She also added, "I'm not the woman president of Harvard, I'm the president of Harvard."^[3]

On October 12, 2007, Faust delivered her installation address as the president of Harvard at Cambridge, Mass., saying, "a university is not about results in the next quarter; it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future".^[10]

One of Faust’s first initiatives after assuming the presidency was to significantly increase financial aid at Harvard College. On December 10, 2007, Faust announced a transformative new policy for middle-class and upper-middle-class students that limited parental contributions to 10 percent for families making between $100,000 and $180,000 annually, and replaced loans with grants. In announcing the policy Faust stated, “Education is the engine that makes American democracy work...And it has to work and that means people have to have access.”^[11] The new policy also expanded on earlier programs that eliminated contributions for families earning earning less than $60,000 a year and greatly reduced costs for families earning less than $100,000. Similar policies were subsequently adopted by Stanford University, Yale University, and many other private U.S. universities and colleges. ^[12][13]

In addition to promoting accessibility to higher education, Faust has testified before the U.S. Congress to promote increased funding for scientific research and support of junior faculty researchers.^[14] She has made it a priority to revitalize the arts at Harvard and integrate them into the everyday life of students and staff.^[15] Faust has worked to further internationalize the University [26] and has been a strong advocate for sustainability and has set an ambitious goal of reducing the University’s greenhouse gas emissions, including those associated with prospective growth, by 30 percent below Harvard’s 2006 baseline by 2016.^[16]

In May 2008, Christina Romer who was an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley was not offered tenure at Harvard despite support from the members of the Harvard Economics Department. Because of the confidential nature of the process, which at Harvard includes a panel consisting of outside experts and internal faculty members from outside the department, Faust has declined to discuss press reports related to Romer’s tenure case.^[17] Romer was later nominated by President Barack Obama to chair the Council of Economic Advisers.

Despite running one of the largest Ivy League institutions, Faust is among the lowest compensated of her peers.^{[citation needed]} In the wake of a series of layoffs in June 2009, Faust drew criticism for her refusal to accept a pay cut in an effort to save jobs. In the months preceding the layoffs, various campus groups called upon Faust and other administrators to reduce their salaries as a means of cutting costs campus-wide.^[18] Reports on Faust's salary differ: The Boston Globe reports that Faust made $775,043 in the 2007-2008 school year.^[19], while the Harvard Crimson reports that Faust made $693,739 in salary and benefits for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.^[20] In early 2009, the Harvard Corporation approved salary freezes for the president, deans, senior officers, management staff, and faculty and offered an early retirement program. The University also undertook an involuntary reduction in staff that 2.4 percent of its employees.^[21]

In December, 2010, Faust and President John L. Hennessy of Stanford University cowrote an editorial in support of passage of the DREAM Act; the legislation was unsuccessful in passing the 111th United States Congress.^[22]

Personal life

Faust is married to Charles E. Rosenberg, a historian of medicine also at Harvard. She was previously married to Stephen Faust. Her first cousin is the movie and television actor Jack Gilpin, a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University.^[23] Her brother is Donald N. Gilpin, an English teacher at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South in Princeton Junction, New Jersey.

Faust was diagnosed with breast cancer and treated in 1988 and "now enjoys a complete bill of health." She has declined to speak with the media about her diagnosis or treatment.^[24]

Honors/affiliations/awards

• Faust was named a member of the "Time 100" (2007)
• Faust was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Human Letters from Bowdoin College (May 2007)
• Faust was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania (May 2008)
• Faust was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities from Yale University (May 2008).^[25]
• Faust was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from Princeton University (May 2010). ^[26]
• Faust received the 2009 Bancroft Prize from Columbia University for This Republic of Suffering (2008)
• Faust was awarded the 2008 American History Book Prize for This Republic of Suffering
• Faust was included in the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women (2009)^[27]
• "Dread Void of Uncertainty" named one of ten best history essays of 2005 by the Organization of American Historians ^[28]
• Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians for Mothers of Invention, 1997 ^[29]
• In 2011 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Faust for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Faust's lecture was entitled "Telling War Stories: Reflections of a Civil War Historian".^[30][31]

Selected works

• This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Knopf, 2008) ISBN 978-0-375-40404-7
  • This Republic of Suffering made the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008" as chosen by the papers editors.^[32] The book was also a finalist for the National Book Awards (2008) and the Pulitzer Prize. (2009) ^[33]
  • This Republic of Suffering received the 2009 Bancroft Prize from Columbia University
• Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0-8078-5573-7
• Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War (University of Missouri Press, 1992) ISBN 978-0-8262-0975-7
• The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Louisiana State University Press, 1982) ISBN 978-0-8071-1606-7
• James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Louisiana State University Press, 1982) ISBN 978-0-8071-1248-9
• A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840-1860 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977) ISBN 978-0-8122-1229-7

Notes

See also: Ivy League Presidents

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Rimer, Sara (2007-02-12). "A ‘Rebellious Daughter’ to Lead Harvard". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/education/12harvard.html. Retrieved 2007-02-17. 
2. ^ Crimson News Staff (2007-02-08). "Faust Expected To Be Named President This Weekend". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516910. Retrieved 2007-02-09. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Alderman, Jesse Harlan (2007-02-11). "Harvard names 1st woman president". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/02/11/harvard_names_its_1st_female_president/. Retrieved 2007-02-11. ^{[dead link]}
4. ^ Maria Sacchetti and, Marcella Bombardieri (2007-02-12). "Champagne, cheers flow at Harvard". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/02/12/champagne_cheers_flow_at_harvard/. Retrieved 2007-02-12. 
5. ^ A 'Rebellious Daughter' to Lead Harvard, The New York Times, Feb. 12, 2007
6. ^ Living History, Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard Magazine, May–June, 2003
7. ^ The New England Ancestry of Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's 28th President, Martin E. Hollick New England Historic Genealogical Society
8. ^ Schuker, Daniel J. T.; Zachary M. Seward, and Javier C. Hernandez (February 8, 2007). "It's Faust: Radcliffe dean, if approved by Overseers, will be Harvard's first female leader". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/2/8/its-faust-drew-gilpin-faust-is/. 
9. ^ Bhayani, Paras D. (February 11, 2007). "Faust Confirmed as 28th President". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516940. 
10. ^ Installation address: Unleashing our most ambitious imaginings Speech by Drew Gilpin Faust, 12 Oct 2007
11. ^ Finder, Alan (December 10, 2007). "Harvard Steps Up Financial Aid". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/education/10cnd-harvard.html. 
12. ^ Finder, Alan (December 10, 2007). "Harvard Steps Up Financial Aid". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/education/10cnd-harvard.html. 
13. ^ Glater, Jonathan D. (February 21, 2008). "Stanford Set to Raise Aid for Students in Middle". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/education/21tuition.html. 
14. ^ "Faust talks to U.S. Senate". The Harvard Crimson. March 11, 2008. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2008/3/11/faust-talks-to-us-senate-university/. 
15. ^ Kim, Minji (February 2, 2010). "A call to arts". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.theharvardcrimson.com/article/2010/2/2/TaskForceCover/. 
16. ^ Statement on the Report of the Harvard Greenhouse Gas Task Force, July 8, 2008
17. ^ Wang, Shan (May 22, 2008). "Faust Vetoes Tenure Decision". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=523619. 
18. ^ Wu, June Q.; Athena Y. Jiang (18 May 2009). "Admins stay mum on salaries". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=528243. Retrieved June 24, 2009. 
19. ^ Jan, Tracy (24 June 2009). "Harvard workers stunned by layoffs". Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/06/24/harvard_workers_stunned_by_layoffs_of_275/. Retrieved June 24, 2009. 
20. ^ "Faust’s salary a surprise". [The Harvard Crimson]. November9, 2009. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/11/9/president-cuts-university-made/. 
21. ^ "Layoffs Begin". Harvard Magazine. July 23, 2009. http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/layoffs-begin. Retrieved September 1, 2010. 
22. ^ "Deserving of the DREAM". Politico. December 8, 2010. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46124.html. Retrieved April 26, 2011. 
23. ^ Harvard Magazine, November–December, 2007
24. ^ Maria Sacchetti and, Marcella Bombardieri (2007-02-27). "In Faust, early bold streak". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/02/25/in_faust_early_bold_streak/?page=1. Retrieved 2007-09-22. 
25. ^ O'Leary, Mary E. (May 27, 2008). "Yale graduates 3,100 under sunny skies". New Haven Register. http://www.nhregister.com/WebApp/appmanager/JRC/BigDaily;jsessionid=m5yyL8zGZVDJVQ2RVnnQQLB9tkQmpb17PPNKwVmdYKczpNG6RCQx!-695287870?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_article&r21.pgpath=%2FNHR%2FHome&r21.content=%2FNHR%2FHome%2FContentTab_Feature_2105115. 
26. ^ Dienst, Karin. "Princeton awards five honorary degrees". princeton.edu. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S27/54/12S69/. 
27. ^ "The 100 Most Powerful Women". Forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/11/power-women-09_The-100-Most-Powerful-Women_Rank_4.html. 
28. ^ "The Best American History Essays". macmillan.com. http://us.macmillan.com/thebestamericanhistoryessays2007. 
29. ^ "Past Winners, Francis Parkman Prize". sah.columbia.edu. http://sah.columbia.edu/content/past-winners. 
30. ^ "Drew Gilpin Faust named 40th Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities", National Endowment for the Humanities, March 21, 2011.
31. ^ Jacqueline Trescott, "Drew Gilpin Faust, the prize-winning historian and Harvard president, will deliver annual Jefferson Lecture", Washington Post, March 21, 2011.
32. ^ "The 10 Best Books of 2008". New York Times. 3 December 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/books/review/10Best-t.htm. 
33. ^ "Pulitzer Prize History 2009". Pulitzer Prize. 2009. http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2009-History. 

External links

• Official website - Harvard University
• Drew Gilpin Faust ’68 to Lead Harvard - Bryn Mawr College
• The Search for Harvard's Next Leader: The inside story on how the Corporation's second choice became the next president of Harvard. - 02138
• First Female Harvard President Discusses Priorities and Goals - The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
• Harvard's Faust: Boundaries Remain for Women - NPR
• Review of Faust's This Republic of Suffering - Wall Street Journal

Academic offices
Preceded by Lawrence Summers	President of Harvard University 1 July 2007 - present	Succeeded by N/A (incumbent)

Persondata
Name	Faust, Drew Gilpin
Alternative names
Short description	American historian, president of Harvard University
Date of birth	September 18, 1947
Place of birth	New York, New York
Date of death
Place of death