Harvard University Elects First Black President Claudine Gay

Harvard University has elected its first Black president.

As reported by CNN, Claudine Gay has been appointed as the school’s 30th president, and will start the role in July 2023. She is not only the first Black president but the first woman and person of color to hold the position. Her predecessor is Lawrence S. Bacow, who was president for five years.

Claudine Gay attended Harvard herself and has maintained a presence at the school. According to the Harvard Gazette, in 1999 she got her Ph.D in government from the university and won the Toppan Prize for best dissertation in political science. In 2018, she began her role as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She is also a political scientist who specializes in political behavior and race issues in America, and is the founding chair of Harvard’s Inequality in America Initiative.

“Today, we are in a moment of remarkable and accelerating change—socially, politically, economically, and technologically,” Gay said, per the Gazette. “So many fundamental assumptions about how the world works and how we should relate to one another are being tested.”

She continued, “There is an urgency for Harvard to be engaged with the world and to bring bold, brave, pioneering thinking to our greatest challenges. As I start my tenure, there’s so much more for me to discover about this institution that I love, and I’m looking forward to doing just that, with our whole community.”