Claudine Gay is named president of Harvard, the first black woman to hold the position

Harvard University named Claudine Gay as the institution’s first black president and only the second woman to hold the position, after Drew Faust who led Harvard from 2007 to 2018.

Gay will succeed Lawrence Bacow on July 1, the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts said in a statement Thursday.

“Claudine is a remarkable leader who is deeply dedicated to maintaining and advancing Harvard’s academic excellence, upholding both the value and values ​​of higher education and research, expanding opportunities, and strengthening Harvard as a source of ideas and a force for the good. in the world,” Penny Pritzker, a senior fellow at Harvard Corporation and chair of Harvard’s presidential search committee, said in a statement.

Claudine Gay joined the Harvard faculty in 2006 as a professor of government and served as dean of social sciences from 2015 to 2018. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, followed by a Ph.D. in government from Harvard.

With the appointment of Claudine Gay, women will outnumber men as principals of the eight Ivy League schools. Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania named women earlier this year, joining Brown and Cornell. Columbia, Princeton and Yale are run by men.