Congrats to Harvard for doing something so smart as as president-ifying Drew Gilpin Faust, once aka Drewdie Gilpin, with whom I shared fourth-year math classes (just the two of us) way back when Concord Academy was an all-girls school.
Drew was then smart and serious and kindly (yes, I know those are funny words to describe a 16 year-old girl). With a little baby powder all over her hair, she made a perfect Southern Colonel for our senior class musical.
Now she has grown up even smarter but still warm-hearted and not so deadpan.
Drew moved to Cambridge just a few years ago as the dean of Radcliffe, which like Harvard has many brilliant and outspoken stakeholders–but unlike Harvard has less-than-infinite money. Hard to imagine how someone could survive that job–and some called her “Chainsaw Drew“? Ouch! But others (most) praised her low-key leadership, leading while listening, building consensus, to quote Newsweek, “without wielding sharp elbows.”
She will do a great job as the new head of Harvard!