Low-Profile Dean Set to Take Center Stage

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

A ‘SUBTLE SKILL’

As president of a large and decentralized university, Faust will have to find means to build consensus among its many factions, an area in which Summers did not succeed—even with some help from Faust herself.

After Summers drew wide criticism in 2005 following comments he made suggesting that women may have a lower “intrinsic aptitude” for science than men, Faust acted as his adviser, ultimately leading a university-wide initiative that led to the creation of two task forces to find means to promote the advancement of women at Harvard.

Through the next year, she continued to serve as an adviser to the president, who often looked to her in meetings to gauge his support.

Ironically, one of Summers’ biggest legacies might have been to open the door for the dean of Radcliffe to become president of the University, and for a woman to lead Harvard for the first time in its history.

As rumors swirled about her candidacy, friends and colleagues said they were confident that she possessed the necessary skills.

“She has always been very solicitous of the views and opinions of others,” Schipper Professor of Law Bruce H. Mann said recently. “You can bring people much farther along if you persuade them to go with you than if you drag them.”

Though her emphasis on consensus-building could raise the concern that she is too middle-of-the-road, her colleagues and friends dismiss the idea, saying that, though she consults with people, she ultimately makes her own decision with conviction.

“The thing about being president of a major university is it requires an enormous amount of ability to bite your tongue, but at the same time stick to it,” Hunt said, adding that she was confident Faust has this “subtle skill.”

In addition, Faust is set to be the first president since Derek C. Bok, the former Law School dean, to be picked from within Harvard. Faust was among several other internal candidates under consideration, including University Provost Steven E. Hyman and Law School Dean Elena Kagan.

NEW CHALLENGES

Though Faust comes from one of the University’s smallest divisions, colleagues said she will be helped by her experience there and the institute’s interdisciplinary approach.

When she took over Radcliffe in 2001, the institute faced a budget shortfall that forced Faust to slash several administrative positions, according to Crimson reports at the time.

Her colleagues say that she was able to handle the situation with “compassion” and “strong leadership”—skills that could help her when she faces tensions as president.

Nevertheless, because of the small size of the Radcliffe Institute, Faust was one of the least seasoned candidates in terms of academic leadership experience. Indeed, many of the other candidates originally considered, including University of Cambridge chief Alison F. Richard and Stanford Provost John W. Etchemendy, held top posts at their respective institutions.

As president of Harvard, Faust will find many new challenges. Rather than dealing with budget reductions, she will be spearheading the University’s massive expansion into Allston.

The choice of Faust also seems to run counter to the desire of some search committee members who were looking for a leader with deep science ties. With research slated to be a primary focus of the proposed Allston campus, both Thomas R. Cech, a 1989 Nobel laureate in chemistry and president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Hyman, who holds a professorship at the Harvard Medical School, were considered strong candidates.

While Faust has no scientific background, Barbara J. Grosz, dean of science at Radcliffe, said that the Radcliffe dean has an impressive amount knowledge of the sciences and will be competent to carry out the task at hand.

“There’s no question in my mind that she will be able to grasp intellectually the material and to understand programmatically what’s needed,” Grosz said last month.

Though Faust will have the opportunity to bring new projects to the docket, she will also have to tackle the ongoing Harvard College Curricular Review and the search for a new dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Faust had been considered a leading candidate for that post, and her selection as president now throws new doubt into the looming dean search. Some have speculated that Harvard will look to a scientist for the Faculty after choosing the third historian in its history to serve as president.

—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.