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Here Are Highlights of the Faust Years at Harvard

In 2007, Drew Gilpin Faust became president of Harvard University, serving as the institution’s first female president. After a 10-year tenure, Ms. Faust said on Wednesday that she would step down.

Ms. Faust led the university through various changes and scandals, including shifts in how the college offered financial aid to middle-income families, the men’s soccer team’s sexually explicit ranking of the women’s soccer team, and the college’s ban on single-gender social clubs after a blistering sexual-assault report.

Her tenure also included changes in the management of Harvard’s endowment, the country’s wealthiest, checking in at $35.7 billion in 2016.

Here’s a look at some of the lasting policy changes and controversies during Ms. Faust’s leadership of Harvard University.

  • Some observers dismiss a year of bad returns as of little consequence for the world’s richest university. Others see a cautionary tale over how elite institutions use and invest their endowments. Above, the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard.
    Finance

    What a $2-Billion Loss Really Means for Harvard and Its Endowment

    By Scott Carlson
    Some observers dismiss a year of bad returns as of little consequence for the world’s richest university. Others see a cautionary tale over how elite institutions use and invest their endowments.
  • Inequality 1

    Inequality Fighter

    By Lee Gardner
    Rosa Ines Rivera gave voice to struggling campus service workers.
  • Harvard is examining whether traditions like the men’s soccer team’s "scouting report," which sized up women physically and sexually, are part of a wider problem across the campus.
    Students

    Harvard Women Take a Public Stand Against ‘Locker Room Talk’

    By Robin Wilson
    Six athletes who were physically ranked by their male peers chose not to remain anonymous. Instead, they have positioned themselves as activists, pressing for broader change.
  • News

    Harvard Says Its Endowment Dropped 22% in 4 Months

    President Drew Gilpin Faust said the university was preparing for the endowment, the largest of any higher-education institution, to fall 30 percent for the year.
  • The Fox Club, one of the prestigious "final clubs" at Harvard, is among two such organizations that recently admitted women. Six other final clubs remain all-male. The groups were criticized in a task force's report for fostering a culture of "sexual entitlement."
    Students

    Harvard Report Highlights Concerns About Exclusive All-Male Clubs

    By Sarah Brown and Katherine Mangan
    A university task force called out the prestigious “final clubs” for fostering a culture of “sexual entitlement.” Harvard isn’t the first institution to grapple with the challenges posed by such groups, which wield outsize influence on campuses but operate with little oversight.
  • News

    Harvard Will Give Middle-Income Families More Aid

    By Eric Hoover
    Flexing its financial muscles, Harvard University announced on Monday a new plan designed to make enrollment more affordable for students from middle- and upper-middle-income families.
  • News

    Harvard’s New President Intends to Use ‘Bully Pulpit’ to Defend Higher Education

    By Paul Fain
    Cambridge, Mass. The leaks that trickled out over the last year about Harvard University’s search for a new president often centered on its reported interest in landing a prominent scientist and a woman. Harvard got its first female president, but not a scientist, with Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of…
  • The Review

    Dead Reckoning

    By Edward L. Ayers
    Drew Gilpin Faust confronts the grisly realities of tallying, tidying, and mourning the Civil War fallen Long before she became the first female president of Harvard University in July 2007, Drew Gilpin Faust showed herself to be an inventive, energetic, and restless historian. Her first book, in…
Leadership & Governance