Harvard inaugurates first Black president, Claudine Gay
Gay is also the second woman to lead the university and its 30th president since its inception in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640.
Claudine Gay has landed a spot in Harvard University history as the institution’s first Black president.
Gay is also the second woman to lead the university since its inception in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640. According to CNN, she spoke of her vision for the Ivy League institution in her inauguration speech, standing on stage with the weight and honor of being the first.
“I stand before you today humbled by the prospect of leading Harvard,” Gay said at her rainy inauguration ceremony Friday, “emboldened by the trust you have placed in me, and energized by your own commitment to this singular institution and to the common cause of higher education.”
“The courage of this University — our resolve, against all odds — to question the world as it is and imagine and make a better one: It is what Harvard was made to do,” she added.
Gay was elected by the Harvard Corporation, the university’s main governing body, following an extensive search.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Harvard graduate, praised Gay’s presidency in a speech on Friday afternoon, calling it “truly historic” and expressing her admiration and support.
Gay graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. in government in 1998 and joined the faculty in 2006. She’s the former Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a notable political behavior expert and the founding chair of the Inequality in America Initiative, an enterprise launched in 2017 to investigate social and economic inequality.
The school’s exiting president, Lawrence Bacow, called her “a person of bedrock integrity.”
Gay “will provide Harvard with the strong moral compass necessary to lead this great university,” Bacow said, CNN reported. “The search committee has made an inspired choice for our 30th president. Under Claudine Gay’s leadership, Harvard’s future is very bright.”
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