Drew Gilpin Faust new Harvard Prez.

First female president in Harvard's history.

Article here in today's NY Times.

My only complaint - she's not a scientist (she's a civil war historian). Here's something I hadn't heard:

Dr. Faust emerged in recent weeks as a finalist among the candidates being considered by the university's search committee, particularly after Thomas R. Cech, a biochemist who is the president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Nobel Prize winner, took the unusual step of announcing publicly that he had withdrawn from the competition.

(Karl you went to lunch with the guy ... you didn't know this?)

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Considering how chronically underfunded the humanities are, everywhere including the Ivies, I'm all for a humanities scholar at the (nominal, at least) end of the purse strings. :)

Gilpin seems like she has a good head on her shoulders, and a good heart. We need more like her in academe.