First Woman Takes Reins at Harvard - New York Times: CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 12 — Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University’s first female president, was inaugurated Friday and offered a spirited defense of American higher education against demands that it quantify what it is teaching and focus primarily on training a global work force.
“The essence of a university is that it is uniquely accountable to the past and to the future — not simply or even primarily to the present,” said Dr. Faust, 60, a Civil War historian and the former head of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at the university.
“A university is not about results in the next quarter,” Dr. Faust said. “It is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future.”
