In ascending to the top of Harvard’s hierarchy, Drew Faust showed herself to be a skillful practitioner of academic politics, a valuable thing in a university president. But in practicing those skills, has Faust sacrificed another part of her identity? “I am a historian,” Faust declared at her initial press conference as president-elect. Yet as Summers learned each time he sparked contro­versy, when the president of Harvard speaks, he—she—can only be the president of Harvard. Past identities no longer define her.

“It’s something I wonder about her,” says Nancy Cott. “How can she take this job and not lose the self that she was? In terms of her characteristics and personality, she won’t lose those. But I find  it hard to see how she can retain her scholarly research self.”

Judging from her relationship with Larry Summers, Faust has been blending her historian side with that of the politician for some time. In 2001, Faust’s name arose when Summers was looking to appoint an FAS dean, but it was too soon—Faust had barely arrived at Radcliffe. Three years later, relations between the two cooled when Summers rejected a tenure application for Marcyliena Morgan, an associate professor of African and African American studies. He had done so, Summers told several people, on Faust’s advice. Faust did not believe she had said any such thing, and when word of Summers’ rationale got back to her she wasn’t pleased. That was one reason why, when Summers ousted FAS dean Bill Kirby in early 2006, she refused his offer to replace Kirby. Another was that she had come to believe that no FAS dean could operate with any measure of autonomy while Summers remained president.

That Faust had said no to a job offer only seemed to make her more attractive to the powers-that-be. After Summers resigned in March 2006 and Derek Bok returned as interim president, Bok asked Faust to serve as FAS dean indefinitely, according to two sources told of the offer. Faust declined, arguing that the next president should have the right to name his or her own dean. Somewhat irritated, Bok then asked her to serve as dean for a year, until the next president took office. Again Faust said no—she didn’t think a temporary dean could get much done. Others had a different interpretation: Faust didn’t want to serve as dean for fear that if she did the job well, the Corporation might want her to remain as dean.

Bok was further irritated. After all, he had emerged from a productive and pleasant retirement because Harvard needed him. When your university asked you to serve, you served. The frustrated president finally persuaded former FAS dean Jeremy Knowles to accept the yearlong position, and the work the two did together on curricular reform, science planning, and numerous other issues suggested that an interim dean could indeed be productive.

As the Corporation launched the search for the next president, Drew Faust was a candidate both in her mind and in the minds of most campus observers. She started with some advantages. Though Bok would not be an enthusiastic supporter of her candidacy, he had already made it clear that his role in the search would be minimal. Faust was on good terms with the other Corporation fellows from their interaction during the Summers crises. Moreover, the other internal candidates, provost Steven Hyman and law school dean Elena Kagan, were considered by many FAS professors to be too close to Summers—whereas Faust, for all her interaction with the president, was nonetheless seen to have kept an appropriate distance.

As the months passed and several external candidates announced that they did not want the job, the Corporation’s first choice became Thomas R. Cech, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. But negotiations between the fellows and Cech broke down in late January, when the scientist would not agree to give up his laboratory research and fully commit to fundraising. That left Faust, whom the Corporation fellows had always seen as a serious and plausible candidate.

Once again, Drew Faust was not Harvard’s first pick, but through a combination of skillful positioning, political savvy, and simple good luck, she was the last person standing.

---

Of course, how university presidents are chosen matters less than what they do in office. Faust inherits Summers’ agenda of developing the Allston campus, revamping undergraduate education, boosting the sciences, and promoting Harvard’s status as a global university. “Drew comes in [to continue] what Larry Summers started,” says Paul Buttenwieser. “She doesn’t have to come up with a vision of her own. She has to come up with how she’s going to administer and change what is ongoing with Harvard.”

Truth is, the Corporation would not have chosen Faust had she expressed any deviation from its agenda. If she has any personal vision, any specific goal that she prioritizes, she has kept it well hidden. “When the search committee and others at Harvard talked to you about the possibility of becoming the president,” Jim Lehrer asked Faust, “were there things that went through your mind … ‘Hey, I would love to do this, I would love to do that?’”

Faust replied, “Almost everything we talked about, I thought, ‘This will be exciting, and that will be exciting.’”

Nancy Cott says that Faust will push to promote greater cooperation bet­ween Harvard’s schools and may try to integrate the performance arts more tightly into Harvard’s undergraduate curriculum. The former is a longtime concern for the university, the latter a minor one. Does it matter if Faust has no bold priorities? Neil Rudenstine thinks not. “There is this clichéd feeling in media circles that institutions have to be ‘shaken up,’” he says, an obvious reference to the rhetoric surrounding Summers’ early days. “There are times when that needs to be done, but there are times to refresh this part or that part—it doesn’t mean that the institution is broken.”

She was the right person,” says Neil Rudenstine. “You had to have someone who could bridge and heal what had been a long, complicated, difficult and sometimes acrimonious relationship between Harvard and Radcliffe.”

Those who think that Harvard still needs the shaking up that Summers wished to effect should not expect it from Faust. To the extent that she has articulated any vision, Faust has spoken of reaffirming the core values of the university: teaching, learning, scholarship, community. “She gives a sense that her values are going to be what guides her,” says Paul Buttenwieser. To some, that would suggest a return to campus harmony absent during the Summers years; to others, a reaffirmation of stasis.

Whatever private agendas Faust may be harboring, one looming challenge will limit her ability to realize them: a multi-billion dollar capital campaign. Harvard had hoped to start such a fund drive when Summers was president, but his recurring controversies kept it tethered to the planning stage. Now the pressure will be on Faust, who is said to be slightly stunned about the amounts she is expected to raise. Fundraising is time intensive; the last capital campaign came during Neil Rudenstine’s decade, and it defined his presidency. It’s very possible, says one professor involved in that campaign, that this one “will consume Faust’s presidency for the first few years and leave her little time for anything else.”

Will she be good at it? This, says another professor, “has to be the billion dollar question on everyone’s minds.” Faust is said to have done well with Radcliffe alumnae, but that fundraising was on a smaller scale and with a qualitatively different constituency. She apparently made positive impressions at a March meeting of the powerful Committee on University Resources, a group of wealthy alumni donors. Yet for all her interpersonal skills, Faust lacks Larry Summers’ charisma, Neil Rudenstine’s eloquence, and Derek Bok’s gravitas, not to mention a Harvard degree. How well Faust will bond with major alumni donors seems a legitimate concern.

In the meantime, Faust’s early moves have been more or less scripted by the Corporation. With the board’s support, she ousted Summers’ vice president for development, Donella Rapier, to indicate a fresh start in fundraising. And she asked provost Steven Hyman to stay on, a move the Corporation advocated to promote continuity in science planning. Her next major task—possibly accomplished by the time this article is published—will be naming an FAS dean. The Corporation wants Faust to name a scientist. Faust’s choice may give some indication of the extent of her autonomy—or her willingness to expend her political capital by exerting her power: Sources say that Hyman has been attending every meeting of Faust’s decanal advisory committee, playing a forceful role. That’s unprecedented for a Harvard provost, who has no official authority over the traditionally powerful FAS dean.

In the meantime, Drew Faust asks questions and says little. She has sought advice from Neil Rudenstine, Amy Gutmann, Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, FAS dean Jeremy Knowles, and Corporation member Nan Keohane. As long as she listens, Drew Faust is something of a Rorschach test, a canvas with more blank space than clarity, onto which the members of the Harvard faculty—and the students, the Corporation, and alumni—project their conceptions of what they wish her to be.

But that approach only postpones a reckoning. Soon, the erstwhile historian—the interpreter of other people’s words, the writer of her own narrative—will have to speak as president. Only then will the multitude of questions surrounding Drew Faust begin to be answered.

Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5