The Power Of Representation In The Harvard University Presidency

Claudine Gay, scholar of democracy and political participation, will assume the leadership of Harvard University on July 1, 2023. Gay has served as the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2018. In this role, she has led the Cambridge-based institution’s largest and most diverse faculty. In addition to fostering countless innovations during her tenure, she successfully led the school through the Covid-19 pandemic.

Gay, who was born in New York City, is the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her father was an engineer and her mother a nurse. She recently shared that her parents “came to the U.S. with very little and put themselves through college while raising [their] family.” She added, “College was always the expectation for me. My parents believed that education opens every door, but, of course, they gave me three options: I could become an engineer, a doctor, or a lawyer, which I’m sure that other kids of immigrant parents could relate to. So, let’s just say becoming an academic was not what my parents had in mind.” Determined, Gay earned her bachelor’s degree in economics at Stanford in 1992, and a Ph.D. in government at Harvard in 1998

Gay has ample academic and professional preparation as well as the respect of the Harvard faculty. However, Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation and chair of Harvard’s presidential search committee pointed out that Gay’s personal qualities are also highly desirable for the presidential position. “For all her professional accomplishments, even more impressive are Claudine’s personal qualities — her quality and clarity of mind, her broad curiosity about fields beyond her own, her integrity and fair-mindedness, and her dedication to creating opportunities for others. She will be a great Harvard president in no small part because she is such a good person,” remarked Pritzker.

Gay is known for her vast “intellectual curiosity and interdisciplinary outlook” and is recognized as a “highly influential expert” on political participation in the United States. “Her research and teaching explore how social and economic factors shape political views and voting behaviors.” Gay is the founding chair of Harvard’s Inequality in America Initiative, an interdisciplinary effort that has advanced scholarship in areas such as child poverty, educational opportunity, “inequities in STEM education, immigration and social mobility, and American inequality in a global context.” According to Pritzker, “Claudine has brought to her roles a rare blend of incisiveness and inclusiveness, intellectual range and strategic savvy, institutional ambition and personal humility, a respect for enduring ideals, and a talent for catalyzing change. She has a bedrock commitment to free inquiry and expression, as well as a deep appreciation for the diverse voices and views that are the lifeblood of a university community.”

In a world that is changing rapidly, and in a university that moves slowly when it comes to change (like most colleges and universities), Gay is aware of the challenges she faces. Upon her election as president, Gay said, “Today, we are in a moment of remarkable and accelerating change — socially, politically, economically, and technologically. So many fundamental assumptions about how the world works and how we should relate to one another are being tested.” She added, ““The idea of the ‘ivory tower’ – that is the past, not the future of academia. We don’t exist outside of society, but as part of it. That means that Harvard has a duty to lean in, engage and to be of service to the world.”

Knowing that her presence as a Black woman and child of immigrants is powerful, Gay shared: “As a woman of color, as a daughter of immigrants, if my presence in this role affirms someone’s sense of belonging at Harvard, that is a great honor.” Linda Oubre, a Harvard University graduate and the first Black president of California-based Whittier College considers Gay’s selection historic and shared, “I am proud that Dr. Gay has been appointed to lead one of the most prestigious universities in the country and the world. It’s about time.” Oubre pointed out that when it comes to leadership, it always matters “who’s in the room.”

According to a 2022 report titled The Women’s Power Gap at Elite Universities: Scaling the Ivory Tower by Andrea Silbert, Magdalena Punty, and Elizabeth Brodbine Ghoniem, representation matters and women of color are not well represented in the presidency of elite institutions of higher education. The report’s authors, who sampled over 130 high impact research institutions and another 20 multi-campus systems, found that half of the sample had never had a woman (or woman of color as president). They also found that although women of color are the fastest-growing population in higher education, only five percent of the presidents in their sample were women of color. Regarding Black presidents, the report’s authors found that although the number of Black men presidents has doubled in recent decades, the rate of Black women in the presidency did not see similar advances. The researchers also found that public universities were more likely to have a person of color in the presidency than private universities, but these individuals were much more likely to be men of color. One of the most important findings in the report pertains to the pipeline to the presidency for women, including women of color. The authors found that 75 percent of the presidents in their sample entered the presidency via a previous academic position — such as a dean or provost —which is typical. Women make up 40 percent of these positions, yet still lack representation in the presidency with only 22 percent of those in the sample being women.

Gay is the second Black woman to serve as president of an Ivy League institution. Ruth Simmons was the first in the presidency of Brown University in Rhode Island from 2001 - 2012. Reacting to Gay’s appointment, Simmons, now president of historically Black Prairie View A&M University (after coming out of retirement), said, “In selecting Claudine Gay as the next president, Harvard’s governing boards have demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that Harvard remains not only the preeminent university in the world but also the university that leads with increasing relevance to the world today.”