First woman is picked to lead Harvard

Drew Gilpin Faust became the Harvard University governing board's choice for the school's next president shortly after her final interview on Sunday night, a person close to the search process said yesterday.

Faust, who will be the first female president in Harvard's 371-year history, convinced the search committee that she would be a strong choice after fielding questions over dinner, the source said.

The Corporation, the name for Harvard's main governing board, plans to present Faust for approval tomorrow to the Overseers, a panel of alumni. The Overseers, by Harvard rules, have final say, but their approval has been a given in modern Harvard history.

Faust, 59, the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, was coy yesterday as she greeted a handful of reporters at her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College, near Philadelphia. A trustee of the college, she was on that campus for a board meeting.

Faust, smiling, refused to answer questions about Harvard, but agreed to let photographers take pictures as she strolled through campus in a two-minute public appearance.

"Could you tell us what you're doing on Sunday?" one reporter asked, referring to tomorrow's vote to approve her.

Faust, a 1968 graduate of the women's college, laughed and said nothing.

Women at Bryn Mawr and throughout higher education were celebrating the fact that if Faust takes office, not only will she be Harvard's first female president, but that half of the Ivy League's presidents will be women. Faust's fellow trustees broke into applause for her yesterday, and she thanked them, according to the college president and the board's chairwoman.

"It sends the right signal, because Harvard didn't intentionally pick a woman, but it turns out that the best president for Harvard was a woman," said Amy Gutmann, who is the second consecutive woman to lead the University of Pennsylvania. "When we were in college, not one of us imagined that this would happen."

Corporation member Robert E. Rubin, the former treasury secretary who had strongly backed former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers, had raised the most concerns about Faust during the search and questioned her aggressively during interviews, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the search process is supposed to be confidential.

Faust was the only candidate being seriously considered after Nobel laureate Thomas R. Cech withdrew last week, throwing into question whether the search would finish on Harvard's preferred schedule.

Several people familiar with the search have said that the committee hoped to finish its work by early February.

"They wanted to get it done as quickly as possible, within a year of Larry Summers's resignation," said the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, a professor and lead minister at Harvard's Memorial Church.

Gomes cautioned the Overseers not to serve as a rubber stamp, but added that Faust would be a good choice. "She'll get a lot done, and it will get done quietly and effectively."

Bundled in a black overcoat and striped black and gray scarf, Faust stood in the wind and cold on Bryn Mawr's campus during her brief appearance yesterday. The only question she answered came from a reporter from the Bryn Mawr student newspaper: What was her favorite tradition at the all-women's college?

"Probably Hell Week," she said, referring to a quirky annual mock hazing that involves costumes and bedtime stories.

Faust has spent six years leading the Radcliffe Institute, a fellowship program and library that was once the university's women's college. A historian of the Civil War and the American South, she spent 25 years teaching at Penn before coming to Harvard.

Women's issues have been a major theme in her life. She graduated from a women's college, studied women in the South throughout history, and has led Radcliffe, a Harvard institution once reserved for women. She also led an effort to study how to better advance women's careers that Harvard undertook after Summers seemed to suggest that women have less "intrinsic aptitude" for science than men.

Several students walking to class in Harvard Yard yesterday cheered the idea of a female president, although they said they did not know much about Faust. (Summers, who was treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, was an instant celebrity when he arrived in 2001, frequently asked by students to sign dollar bills.)

"It's fantastic," said Jordan Bock, 18, from Weston. "It will be great to change things up. It's been too long."

Bock, a freshman who is considering studying astrophysics, said she was surprised two years ago by Summers's comments about women.

Women lead three other Ivy League schools and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but only 14 percent of the presidents of research universities nationally are women, according to a report to be issued Monday by the American Council on Education. That's up from 4 percent in 1986.

Tiffany Shumate, a Bryn Mawr junior majoring in psychology, said she equated Faust's appointment to Senator Hillary Clinton running for president of the United States. "It just makes me have more hope for gender equality," Shumate said.

Tracy Jan of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Gilda Rodriguez contributed to this report from Bryn Mawr, Pa. Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com; Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com.