(Drew Gilpin Faust photo credit: Erik Jacobs/NYT)
Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust
, was inaugurated as Harvard University's President on Friday Oct. 12. Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian with the special knowledge on the history of the South in the antebellum period and Civil War, is the first female president of Harvard University and also Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard.
Her predecessor Lawrence Summers resigned on June 30, 2006, after he set off a storm by suggesting that a lack of intrinsic aptitude could help explain why fewer women than men reach the top ranks of science and math in universities.
Ms. Drew Gilpin Faust was born September 18, 1947. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988 but declined to speak with the media about her diagnosis or treatment.
Source: New York Times & Wikipedia Link to Harvard's Drew Gilpin Faust Inauguration homepage