Harvard University appointed its first Black president, Claudine Gay.
The university announced on Dec. 15 that their election committee elected Gay to become its 30th president after the soon-to-be former president Larry Bacow announced in June that he was stepping down.
“Claudine is a remarkable leader who is profoundly devoted to sustaining and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence, to championing both the value and the values of higher education and research, to expanding opportunity, and to strengthening Harvard as a fount of ideas and a force for good in the world,” Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation and chair of Harvard’s presidential search committee, said.
She continued, “All of us on the search committee are excited by the prospect of her bringing her high aspirations and interdisciplinary outlook across the Yard from University Hall to Massachusetts Hall. We are confident Claudine will be a thoughtful, principled, and inspiring president for all of Harvard, dedicated to helping each of our individual Schools to thrive, as well as fostering creative connections among them.”
Born from Haitian immigrants, Gay thrived when it came to her education. She received her Bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford in 1992, earning the Anna Laura Myers Prize for best undergraduate thesis. She obtained her Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1998, achieving the Toppan Prize for the best dissertation in political science.
Gay was an assistant professor and later a tenured associate professor at Stanford before going to Harvard to become a government professor in 2007. The same year she became a professor of African and African American Studies. Since 2018, she has served as the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).
“I am humbled by the confidence that the governing boards have placed in me and by the prospect of succeeding President Bacow in leading this remarkable institution,” she said following her election. “It has been a privilege to work with Larry over the last five years. He has shown me that leadership isn’t about one person. It’s about all of us moving forward together, and that’s a lesson I take with me into this next journey.”
She continued, “Today, we are in a moment of remarkable and accelerating change — socially, politically, economically, and technologically. So many fundamental assumptions about how the world works and how we should relate to one another are being tested.”
“Yet Harvard has a long history of rising to meet new challenges, of converting the energy of our time into forces of renewal and reinvention,” she continued. “With the strength of this extraordinary institution behind us, we enter a moment of possibility, one that calls for deeper collaboration across the University, across all of our remarkable Schools. There is an urgency for Harvard to be engaged with the world and to bring bold, brave, pioneering thinking to our greatest challenges,” Gay said.
She concluded by stating she looked forward to getting to know the school more.
