Drew Gilpin Faust
Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947)[1] is an American historian who served as the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman in that role.[2] She was Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or graduate degree from Harvard and the first to have been raised in the South.[3][4] Faust is also the founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.[1] She has been ranked among the world's most powerful women by Forbes, including as the 33rd most powerful in 2014.[5]
Drew Gilpin Faust
Early life and education[edit]
Drew Gilpin was born in New York City[6] and raised in Clarke County, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley.[1] She is the daughter of Catharine Ginna (née Mellick) and McGhee Tyson Gilpin. Her father was a Princeton graduate and bred thoroughbred horses, among other business ventures.[1][7] Her paternal grandfather, Kenneth Newcomer Gilpin, was a businessman who served in the Virginia House of Delegates (representing Clarke and adjacent Warren Counties) and was an aviator in both World War I and World War II. Her paternal great-grandfather, General Lawrence Tyson, was a U.S. senator from Tennessee during the 1920s.[8][9] Faust also has New England ancestry and is a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, the third president of Princeton.[7]
Faust graduated from Concord Academy, in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1964. She earned a B.A., magna cum laude, with honors in history from Bryn Mawr College in 1968. She earned an M.A. in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and a Ph.D. in 1975, with a dissertation entitled "A Sacred Circle: The Social Role of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840–1860".[10][11]
Personal life[edit]
Faust is married to Charles E. Rosenberg, a historian of medicine at Harvard. Rosenberg was Faust's dissertation advisor.[32] They have a daughter, Jessica Rosenberg, who is a Harvard graduate and works for The New Yorker. Faust also has a stepdaughter, Leah Rosenberg.[33]
She was previously married to Stephen Faust.[34]
Faust was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988 and treated that year. She has enjoyed good health since then. She has declined to speak with the media with more details about her diagnosis or treatment.[35]