In 1999, Harvard called again; the occasion was the Harvard-Radcliffe merger. For decades, women at Radcliffe had essentially been attending Harvard. Now, as Harvard took possession of Radcliffe’s properties and endowment, the women’s college would be transformed into a scholarly institute with resident fellows but no faculty or students. Harvard president Neil Rudenstine would head a committee to pick the new dean.

Faust was not that group’s first choice, and probably not even its second. Those were Princeton political scientist Amy Gutmann and Harvard law professor Martha Minow. But Gutmann wasn’t sure she wanted the job, and Minow was sure she didn’t want it. “There were some members of the search committee who wanted me to take the post, but I did not want to leave teaching and writing at the law school,” Minow says via e-mail. (Gutmann did not respond to an interview request.)

Faust did have one passionate backer. “There was no doubt in my mind that she was the right person,” Neil Rudenstine says. “You had to have someone who could not just run something, but had the qualities to bridge and heal what had been a long, complicated, difficult, and sometimes acrimonious relationship between Harvard and Radcliffe.”

A position was found for Rosenberg in the history of science department, and this time Faust was ready to leave Penn. The Radcliffe deanship, she exp­lained, was “the most exciting job” in higher education. “Her thinking was, ‘Okay, this will be a stepping stone for the next thing,’” says one professor who has known her since that period. “She did see that it would put her in a position to enhance her probability of becoming a college president someplace.”

In April 2000, Drew Faust became the “founding dean” of the Radcliffe Institute. As Rudenstine suggests, the situation was fraught with potential pitfalls. Many alumnae didn’t much care for this new Radcliffe. Plus, the institute required a far smaller staff than the college had employed; Faust would have to fire people. Most of all, there was a broad gap between conceiving of the institute and making that conception a tangible reality. Within just a few years, Faust defused the problems, transforming Radcliffe into a small but credible Harvard institution.

“She succeeded beyond what anyone expected,” says one Harvard professor present at the creation. “It was a very difficult, volatile political situation. It could have exploded. But each step of the way, she handled it very well.”

“At the time of the institute’s creation,” says Paul Buttenwieser, vice chair of the executive committee of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, “there were people who thought this was just a sop to women. She proved it wasn’t, that it was an important addition to Harvard.”

Some skeptical professors point out that once the initial changes were made, the Radcliffe deanship was, as one puts it, “a minor job, like being chairman of a moderate-sized department.” Its annual budget was a relatively meager $16 million or so. It had no students, no permanent faculty, “just a bunch of visiting fellows, and mostly they want to be left alone to do their work.” As a result, the Radcliffe dean had considerably fewer responsibilities than most Harvard deans.

Still, Faust was good at the job, and she discovered that she liked leadership. “She enjoyed it,” says one former Harvard dean. “Even the cutting and hacking, removing this or that piece.” Faust took satisfaction in making things work and felt comfortable wielding power. “She’s not idea-driven, but she likes to be in a position of some power,” says one senior professor. Faust had evolved from someone who petitioned authority figures to someone who was herself an authority figure, and with that evolution came added confidence, a greater sense of the expanse of her own talents, and an increased personal ambition.

While the Radcliffe Institute is small—it has 86 employees—it proved a power base of sorts for Faust, whose main job was to give away money to the fellows. She wielded that patronage deftly, creating allies but not enemies. And though she had some power, she didn’t have a lot of responsibility; Radcliffe is so small, says the former dean, “that the dean of Radcliffe can keep her head down in bad times.” When Larry Summers arrived at Harvard in 2001 with a mandate to shake up the university, Faust could operate under the radar because she had done what all managers want their employees to do: She had taken a nagging problem and made it go away.

Her success attracted attention beyond Cambridge. In 2006, she was a cand­idate to become the director of the Mellon Foundation but didn’t want the job. In the fall of 2003, she was in the running for the University of Pennsylvania presidency, but Amy Gutmann landed the post. And in late 2005, she was a top candidate for the presidency of the University of Chicago, but bowed out of consideration. Her recusal, some professors say, didn’t mean that Faust didn’t want to be a university president, but that she saw possibilities closer to home. “About three years into Summers’ presidency, she realized that Summers wasn’t going to last,” says one professor familiar with her thinking. If so, Faust was unusually prescient; that sentiment was not widespread until the fourth year of Summers’ presidency, when the president ignited his most damaging controversy.

In January 2005, Summers made his now-notorious remarks about the mental capabilities of women, and Faust agreed to serve on two resulting committees addressing the status of women at Harvard. To many FAS professors, most of whom are supportive of Faust, this was the moment where Faust’s road map to the Harvard presidency first became visible and viable. “With the women-in-science crisis, she was put in a position where she could become fundamentally more central to the institution and a much stronger candidate for president,” says one professor invo­lved in high-level deliberations about Summers’ comments. In her new role, Faust could better the lot of women at Harvard while helping steer the university through a painful time—even as she forged relationships with members of the Harvard Corporation, the secretive body that chooses Harvard’s presidents.

Faust feared that being seen as too critical of Summers might damage her chances of becoming president. “Some of the women on the task forces were upset that more wasn’t going to be done. They were upset with Drew."

At the recommendation of those task forces, Summers announced in May 2005 that Harvard would spend $50 million over 10 years to promote the hiring of women and facilitate their career paths at Harvard. Some Harvard professors hailed the plan as a watershed. Yet skeptics worried that Faust had shied away from aggressive reform. Much of that $50 million was already allotted, they argued, and in any case, $5 million a year for 10 years was hardly a substantial investment for Harvard. According to this school of thought, Faust feared that being seen as too critical of Summers might damage her chances of becoming president, and stopped short of recommending specific recruitment procedures or reviewing the tenure nomination process, as a stronger advocate for women academics would have done. “Some of the women on the task forces were upset that more wasn’t going to be done,” says one female professor. “They were upset with Drew.”

Now that she is president, will Faust become an outspoken advocate for women at Harvard? Most professors doubt it; whatever the symbolic import of Faust’s presidency, no one expects it to usher in an era of gynocentrism at Harvard, for Faust clearly believes that for her to be defined by gender could be polarizing. A period of quiet, behind-the-scenes progress for women seems more likely.

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