Faust Takes Chinese Spring Break

This year’s spring break destination of choice for Harvard isn’t Cancun. It’s China.

University President Drew G. Faust will lead a group of administrators and faculty to the East Asian country for an international Harvard Alumni Association conference, held annually in a different foreign city.

Faust said yesterday that the trip—which has been in the works since before her appointment to the presidency—comes at a time when all of Harvard’s schools are expanding their ties with the region.

“China is obviously growing rapidly and expanding into higher education rapidly,” said Faust, who will receive an honorary degree from Peking University during the trip.

Several high-profile Harvard administrators will accompany Faust, including University Provost Steven E. Hyman, Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood ’75, and new Graduate School of Design Dean Mohsen Mostafavi—who has promised to give Faust an architectural tour of Shanghai, the president said.

“I insisted that, if I was going to go to China, I was going to get to see some things and not just go to meetings,” she said, citing the Forbidden City and the Great Wall as some of the country’s “greatest hits” that she plans to visit.

Though she didn’t get to choose the spring break location this year, Faust said she had already made a pick for 2009: Cape Town, South Africa.

“I’m very excited about this because my area of scholarly expertise is the American South, and so much of that originates in African American and African history,” she said.

Next week will mark Faust’s first visit to China, but for another member of her entourage, the journey will be something of a homecoming.

Constitutional Law Professor Lawrence H. Tribe ’62 “was born in Shanghai because his parents were Jewish refugees,” Faust said. “So he’s going back for the first time since he was five or six years old.... This is a very dramatic trip for him.”

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Nathan C. Strauss can be reached at strausss@fas.harvard.edu.