Drew Gilpin Faust

President Emeritus, Harvard University

Drew Gilpin Faust is President Emerita of Harvard University and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor.

As president of Harvard from 2007 to 2018, Faust expanded financial aid to improve access to Harvard College for students of all economic backgrounds and advocated for increased federal funding for scientific research. She broadened the University’s international reach, led a highly successful capital campaign, updated University governance, raised the profile of the arts on campus, promoted diversity and inclusion, embraced sustainability, launched edX, the online learning partnership with MIT, and promoted collaboration across academic disciplines and administrative units as she guided the University through a period of significant financial challenges.

Faust previously served as founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2001-2007). Before coming to Radcliffe, she was the Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of six books, including most recently This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008), which chronicles the impact of the Civil War’s enormous death toll on the lives of nineteenth-century Americans. It was awarded the 2009 Bancroft Prize, the New-York Historical Society’s 2009 American History Book Prize, and was recognized by The New York Times as one of the “Ten Best Books of 2008.” This Republic of Suffering is the basis for a 2012 Emmy-nominated episode of the PBS American Experience documentaries titled Death and the Civil War, directed by Ric Burns. She is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.

Faust’s honors include awards in 1982 and 1996 for distinguished teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, the Society of American Historians in 1993, and the American Philosophical Society in 2004. In September of 2018 she was awarded the John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity by the Library of Congress. She received her bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr in 1968, magna cum laude with honors in history, and master’s (1971) and doctoral (1975) degrees in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.