History is being made at Harvard as the Ivy League university officially installs its first female president. Drew Gilpin Faust has actually been on the job for several months after being elected earlier this year by the Harvard Corporation, the school’s governing body.Faust is a historian who previously served as dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She succeeds Lawrence Summers, who was pressured out after five contentious years at the helm.Faust will be formally inaugurated as Harvard’s 28th president Friday during an outdoor ceremony at the Tercentenary Theatre. Scholars and academic leaders from around the world are expected to attend.
Sure, but who’s going to do the installation? A guy, I bet.
Anyway, a selection of works that wouldn’t stir any controversy, like that Summers guy did:
- Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 1996) ISBN 978-0807855737
- Southern Stories: Slaveholders in Peace and War (University of Missouri Press, 1992) ISBN 978-0826209757
- The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Louisiana State University Press, 1982) ISBN 978-0807116067
- James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (Louisiana State University Press, 1982) ISBN 978-0807112489
- A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South, 1840-1860 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977) ISBN 978-0812212297
So, way to go, Harvard, rewarding intellectual incuriosity and shrewish moralizing with a Women’s Studies presidency for the aca-rabble. I don’t blame Faust. I imagine her academic work is stellar. But it is pure idiocy to appease these people, and against the intellectual idea of a university.
Meanwhile, Malkin’s been tracking the curious story of the Columbia noose.
Comment by Gray on 10/12 @ 9:43 am #
Do you actually have to have two last names to be a female president of anything, or does it just help?
It’s common in Latino cultures to carry both patronymics, but only if you are related to royalty.
I naturally axe any woman with two last names, or a hyphen, if they are related to Spanish royalty. None so far….
Comment by mojo on 10/12 @ 10:03 am #
Just don’t mess with her private secretary, Mr. Mephistopheles…
Comment by Ted Nugent's Soul Patch on 10/12 @ 11:01 am #
The sad part is that when I first saw those books on the shelf at the bookstore, I thought Drew Gilpin Faust was a guy….
Comment by Techie on 10/12 @ 12:33 pm #
So that’s why I couldn’t get a parking spot in Harvard Square…
Comment by daleyrocks on 10/12 @ 1:26 pm #
Are those books still neck and neck on the NY Times best seller list with Greenwals’s latest?
Comment by Fat Man on 10/12 @ 1:44 pm #
Mothers of Invention? Did she name her kids Moon Unit and Dweezil?
Comment by mojo on 10/12 @ 1:52 pm #
Laziness is the Mother of Invention. Necessity got a bad rap.
Comment by andy on 10/12 @ 7:56 pm #
“So, way to go, Harvard, rewarding intellectual incuriosity and shrewish moralizing with a Women’s Studies presidency for the aca-rabble. ”
You get all this from the titles of her books?
Comment by thor on 10/12 @ 8:32 pm #
Pass me a shard of glass and a half-bottle of vodka. If I don’t have eyes then I can’t see. If I can’t see, I can’t read. If I can’t read Andy’s posts I won’t kick my monkeys. Save a monkey, and for the love of children where’s that vodka!
Comment by JD on 10/12 @ 8:40 pm #
thor - If you must kick something, I suggest that Vick blow up doll.
Comment by thor on 10/12 @ 9:21 pm #
Haven’t you people kicked poor Mr. Vick enough? The man is not an animal, fer Christ-sakes.
Comment by thor on 10/12 @ 11:48 pm #
If only dogs and cats had wings.
Comment by Forbes on 10/13 @ 2:41 pm #
So the Harvard president has an expertise regarding the history of the US South during a 20 year period. Fascinating.
That’s what I love about these academic specialists–they know more and more about less and less, that eventually they know everything about nothing.
Trackback by Tel-Chai Nation on 10/14 @ 2:11 am #
More hate crimes run amok at Columbia U…
Racist crimes against blacks and Jews continue at Columbia. For example, we have this case of a hang-noose found hung on the door of a black professor’s office (via Michelle Malkin):…
Trackback by Save Animals on 11/24 @ 10:16 pm #
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