Harvard Names New President

February 12, 2018 Ivy League, National News

Harvard University has hired one of its own as the 29th university president.

Lawrence Bacow, a member of the Harvard Corporation, will take what is perhaps America’s most prestigious university post, taking over from Drew G. Faust, the school’s first female president. Faust has been Harvard’s president since 2007 and announced this past June that she would be stepping down this summer.

The school made the announcement yesterday afternoon, ending a nearly seven-month search for a new leader. Bacow was a member of the committee that started the initial search, but ended up becoming its final target.

Bacow was previously president of Tufts University and the chancellor at MIT.

The Harvard Crimson reports:

Bacow, a Michigan native, hails from a family of immigrants. His mother was an Auschwitz survivor and his father was a refugee from the pogroms of Eastern Europe. At Sunday’s press conference—his first public appearance as the president-elect—Bacow told his parents’ story and spoke about the impact of higher education on his own life.

“It was higher education that made this all possible, and I look forward to working every day as president of Harvard to ensure that future generations benefit from the same opportunity that my family had and so many of us, I suspect, who sit in this room today also have—and that is the opportunity to experience the American dream,” he said.

Dacow takes the helm at a time many experts see as a crossroads for U.S. higher education, including an unfriendly administration who are pushing on a tax on college endowments that could ding Harvard for millions.

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Natalia is a recent graduate of George Mason University where she studied Communication (Journalism concentration) and Global Affairs (Environment concentration) in Fairfax, Virginia. She's looking to enter the media field as a writer and combine her passion of journalism and the environment.

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