Harvard names Claudine Gay as new president

Claudine Gay

Claudine Gay has been elected as Harvard University’s 30th president, the school announced last Thursday.

Gay, the founding chair of Harvard’s Inequality in America Initiative and the dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2018, is the school’s first Black leader and the second woman to be appointed its president. 

The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Gay received her bachelor’s degree in 1992 from Stanford University where she majored in economics. In 1998, she received her PhD in government from Harvard University.

Gay served as an assistant professor and then tenured associate professor at Stanford University before being recruited to Harvard University in 2006 as a professor of government. She was also appointed a professor of African and African American studies in 2007.

She will be succeeding current Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow, who announced he was retiring in June after five years at the helm. His predecessor, historian Drew Gilpin Faust, was the first woman to serve as Harvard president since its founding in 1636.

Gay’s tenure as president is set to begin on July 1, 2023.

Havard University has an enrollment of more than 20,000 degree candidates.